New Game Design: Cosmic Critters

(Click on the picture to the left to see a full-sized version.)

I wanted to get a couple of new designs worked up to the point of being able to test them at Protospiel-Milwaukee in March.  So, I’ve taken a couple that I had back-burnered over the past couple of years and put them back in my work queue.

The one pictured here is “Cosmic Critters” … a simple family card game about being a salesperson at a store that sells pets from outer space.  The graphics on the example cards are just a placeholder … I have a good friend who is working on some illustrations that I’ll use as I update the prototype.  For now, the icons I’m using will be functional.

The basic gameplay is that there will be several customer cards (the ones shown in the bottom row) out in the middle of the table. You play pet cards (the ones shown in the top row) from your hand covered up with your player offer card so that no one else can see what you’re offering.

When it gets back around to being your turn, you reveal all of the bids for the customer that you made an offer on and the player that best meets the customer’s wants collects all of the pet cards offered for scoring.  Once players are out of cards, everyone scores their collection.

Each pet has a species, a color, a cost, and a “likability” score … customers each want a specific species in a specific color and then either want the cheapest one, or the most likable one.  The players who best match the customer’s wants for species/color then compare their cost or likability to determine whose offer is chosen by the customer.

There’s a bit more too it (each player can have 2 offers out at a time, for example), and a few variations on rules that need testing this early in the cycle … but so far this looks to have something to it.