Contest entry: Dancing Queen

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. 

• BoardGameGeek discussion thread
• Rulebook
• Game download
• Tabletopia (free to play)
• Tabletop Simulator (software required)

Youtube rule explanation: