[Chantun Rey]

Hello everyone! So my 5 yo daughter wants to design a game, I will help her. Obvioulsly the first thing she imagine is straight forward race (mechanic, not theme) game, roll and move.

I want to help her making it more complex, add some decision to it.

Do you have any ideas what can be added so is a little more complex but not too much?

At the moment I’m thinking on making it so that you can decide to go in various directions, not just forward..

Thanks in advance!

[Johnathan Proctor]

Well this is exciting. I’m doing the exact same thing!! After seeing me work on my own game for a few weekends (“Dad… are you still working on that!? It’s not done?), my daughter drew her own board and used an origami cube from school to try and build a game. I’ve been inspired to try and build it out into a print-n-play that can be both a game and a cool kids craft project for summers or vacations.

So right now I’m working on a grid so that you can go up, down, left, and right to get to the objective. There may be some obstacles in the way, so you’re racing to get to the next object that pops up. If you want to make it asymmetric, you can make it so that different players can have exclusive abilities to go into certain squares. These are all just ideas I’m working with, so hopefully they might inspire you as well.

[Chantun Rey]

that’s awesome! hope you the best! I would love to see the final game

[Emily Bekius]

My daughter and I made a game this summer called “dragons in the mountains”, modeled after one of her old favorite little kids games, “unicorns in the clouds”. It was still pretty simple, but we had some different colored spaces where if you landed on them you would then roll to see what would happen next. If you landed on a yellow, that was near a place that might have hidden treasure, i.e. a cave, sunken pirate ship, etc. You would roll to see how many, if any, jewels you would find. Other spaces were red and they had someone or some thing that you had to battle. If your role was successful you got to pass by, but if not you had to pay one of your jewels to the knight/wizard/other dragon. Other spaces were just short cuts if you landed on them. Willow also added some larger jewels around the regular spaces that you could collect if you got there first, and they were supposed to be dragon eggs. Pretty simple, but a little bit more fun and interesting. It’s version 1.0 so you never know how might evolve! It was really fun to make it with her either way.

[Chantun Rey]

That sounds fun! I love to share those moments with the little ones. Their faces when they make a click and understand some concept.

[Roger Meloche]

If choice is what you’re looking for, perhaps there can be many paths with different terrain. You have to buy add-ons to your racer like waterwheels to cross a pond, sneakers to sneek past a dragon or sandles to go across the dessert. Each add-on will have a different cost from 1 to 6. You have to roll a D6 to see how much you have to spend, then decide on which add-on to buy and which rout to take. You can only have a limited number of add-ons so you might have to roll another die to sell one or two so you can afford the add-on you need to get over the next obstacle.

[Chantun Rey]

Thanks! that’s a neat idea!

[Reuben Sonnenberg]

Here’s a few ideas:

• Shortcuts: alternate routes that may cause you to miss out on power-up.
• Power-ups: an extra dice roll for a boost (instant or save for later), an item for overcoming particular obstacles, an item to give +1 to all dice rolls, etc.
• Obstacles: things that slow you down, maybe making you miss a turn or even go back a few spaces.

Do you want to give the player the ability to modify their own vehicle or the track?