Found Item Game Development

My takeaway from GDC this year was that I've been focusing too much on learning game development and not enough on designing compelling games. As such, I've decided to experiment with some "found item games". Basically that means I look at the objects on a table and try to make a game out of them. This is my second attempt (the first one requires a big stack of buisness cards). If somebody were to play it and tell me how it went, I would be grateful.

Thanks!

Nintendoeats

Spare Change Jousting-Checkers

Materials

1 bank card

1 table

An equal number of pennies and dimes

2 nickels or quarters

Setup

One player takes all of the pennies, the other takes all of the dimes. Each player places their coins, heads up, on the table in as near to a perfect straight line as possible. Each player then takes one of the nickels or quarters and places it heads up within one bank card’s length of any coin in their line. Flip a coin to determine who goes first.

Gameplay

During your turn, the opposing player MUST place the bank card such that it meets the following criteria:

1. It touches the edge of at least one of your coins.

2. It touches at least one of your coins such that the contact point is within visual range of the face printed on the coin.

Once the card is placed, you must move at least one of the coins contacting the bank card. You may place it anywhere along the outer edge of the bank card so long as it does not overlap with another one of your coins, its own previous position, or the previous position of another of your coins moved that turn. You may rotate the coin in any way that you like.

If your coin overlaps or contacts an opposing player’s coin, remove the opposing player’s coin.

Winning

The winner is the first player to either eliminate all of the opponent’s coins, or to eliminate the opposing player’s nickel/quarter. The loser has to take all of the change to a store and use at least half of it to buy something for the winner.

Multiplayer Variant

If playing with more than 2 players, remove all of a player’s coins from the table when their quarter/nickel is captured. The last player to be knocked out is considered the loser for the purposes of going to the store.