Today is Valentine's Day, which matches the theme of this game well.
BoardGameGeek is running a game design competition now, and the key premise is
you can only use 9 cards in your design. I thought that was quite interesting
and decided to give it a go. I have always been a big fan of Seiji
Kanai's Love Letter. So I set that as my goal. I wanted to create
a game that is simple, clever and fun, with some depth that is not immediately
apparent. I wanted something people would enjoy exploring the intricacies
of.
Dancing Queen is a 2-player game. Every card in the game is a dancer.
When you play a card, you play it face-down, so your opponent wouldn't know
what you have played. You will play at most 4 cards, and one of them is
designated to be your lead dancer. The rest are supporting dancers. Each card
has a girl half and a boy half. Depending on how you orient the card when you
play it, you determine the gender. The half pointing at your opponent is the
gender of the card. In this photo above, the player has played two girls,
while the opponent has played one girl and two boys.
A complete game takes about 20 minutes. You will play several rounds. The
winner of a round gets a trophy (yellow cube). Whoever reaches 4 trophies
first wins the game. At the start of a round, both players simultaneously play
a card, and these are the initial lead dancers. After that you take turns
either drawing and playing a card, or proposing to end the round.
When a round ends, both players reveal their lead dancers and score points
accordingly. Higher scorer wins the round. The scoring methods all depend on
the game situation. E.g. the pairs in play are all same-gender pairs (like in
the photo above), or there is an even number of cards in play. Some cards have
an instant-win condition. If the game situation matches the condition exactly,
you win the round immediately. E.g. the Spice Girls card requires exactly 5
girls (and no boys). If your lead dancer is the Spice Girls and there are
exactly 5 girls in play, you end the round and win a trophy immediately.
It was great fun going through the designing and playtesting process. It was a
lot of work too. Younger daughter Chen Rui did the most playtesting with me.
She claims to play brainlessly, but that is not true. She came up with a
strategy which stunned me and I had to take that into account when I further
tweaked the game. I asked a number of gamer friends to help me with
playtesting, and they gave me many ideas and suggestions. I found it critical
to get input from many people. There were many unusual situations and
perspectives that I had not thought of myself. The playtesting sessions gave
me much to think about and helped me improve the design.
Now the game is in a presentable state and I have submitted it to
BoardGameGeek, to get the help of even more people to playtest it and give me
feedback. If this sounds interesting to you, do download and play, and let me
know your thoughts.
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