Gamesmanship

This weekend, Daddy and I worked on designing several games. It all started Saturday morning. I wanted to play the Tiger Woods golf computer game, but Mommy was using the computer. This led Daddy and I to try to come up with our own games. First, I thought up a game like Candyland. It had a windy trail and you had to get to a castle at the end. Daddy sketched the trail and then I colored in the squares. It was a pretty good game, but too much like, well, Candyland.

Next, I decided that I wanted a game with arrows that you could travel on. Daddy came up with a game that was sort of a cross between Candyland and Chutes and Ladders. In this game, there is a grid of colored squares. You throw the color dice (which we also made) to see which square to go to next. If you land at the end of an arrow, you slide along it to wherever it takes you. I liked this game a lot although there was one arrow that was a little too "happy" and makes the game too easy to win if you land on it.

Because of the happy arrow and some problems with the color die, Daddy thought up a variant of this game. Daddy thinks this variant is a great game although I like it less than the arrows version. In this game, there is once again a grid that you have to travel to get to the end. On each square of the grid is the name of a card A, 2, 3, etc. However, the names of the face cards and the joker are missing. Players take turns drawing cards and proceed to the next spot on the grid with their card value. However, if you draw a face card or joker, then instead of moving along the gird (up and down) you move sideways. Jack and King are bad. You move 1 square to the right on a Jack and three to the right on a King. Queen and Joker are good. You move one square to the right with queen and two to the right with Joker. First one to the end wins. The reason Daddy likes this game is that it plays relatively quickly and there are dramatic swings of fortune. There are two or more lead changes every time we played.

Now, on to the best game of all---the Amazing Race game. Daddy and I came up with this together. I suggested that I wanted a game where you had to travel around to various places on Earth and get treasure. Daddy had the idea of drawing a map of Europe (freehand) where we colored in all the countries. The only variation from real Europe is that I insisted that we should have Hawaii on the map too. We placed Hawaii in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

We then labeled many of the countries with a card value like red Jack or black 10, etc. At the start of the game, each person draws a card to see which country they start in. They then draw the first "clue" card to figure out where they have to go on the first leg of the race. Players then take turns moving one country or one sea area to get to their destination. Once they arrive their, they draw another clue card to get to the next destination. First one to complete four destinations wins the Amazing Race.

This game is spectacularly fun. I'm learning about all sorts of countries. For instance, did you know there is a country called Turkey. I thought that was kind of funny. I met someone from Turkey at a party last night and put my new knowledge to use. I told here that Turkey was a country near the Black Sea. She was really impressed that I knew that. There is also some trickiness in the game in figuring out the quickest route to get to the next destination. Should I go by land? Or by boat? It's really a fun game. We should play it over Christmas.