Nice Games Jam: "I’m Holding It for a Friend"

Nice Games Club - a gamedev podcast!

We invite Joanna May into the clubhouse again in this supersized episode to design a game about stowing illicit goods into spacecraft as it's being built!

(Note: Minor hiccup with the audio recording in the first 2 minutes, so Lydia is off mic briefly but it fixes itself.)

• Tangrams

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  Wikipedia
• We mention Dogpile!, a game we made in a previous game jam.

  Dogpile!

Prompt

Design a puzzle game about loading passengers and/or cargo into various spacecraft (or other transport).

Game type

Tabletop game

Player count

4 or more

Rules

• The ship is a pad of paper with outline of ship (legal pad sized)
  • The interior is blank, what you draw is the interior spaces
  • Each turn, the freighter captain draws the modules
    • False walls, freezers, to shape what you can put in there
    • They have their own secret goal
  • Each turn, the other players are smuggling things (they don’t know about what others are doing)
    • Contraband
    • Each turn they can put one thing in there or move a thing
      • Maybe you have to slide it only, you can’t pick it up after it’s been added
• Each game has an ending determination and then also a scoring system
  • Everyone loses if ship gets caught
• Hidden role game?
  • Freighter Captain
    • Makes the ship
  • Contraband smuggler
    • Tries to add the most of contraband as they can
  • Honest worker
    • Wants to add the most of the goal as possible
  • Inspector
    • Wants to find the smuggler