Building a game based on a core mechanic...

[Originally written 10/22/07, never posted, now edited]
... that is itself another, simpler game.

Zooloretto won the Spiel de Jars a few years ago, it's a game built on the mechanic that is the game Coloretto. I mentioned in a previous post (in another forum) some thoughts on a game built on the mechanic in Reiner Kinizia's eXXtra, a die rolling mechanic which makes for a neat mini-game in itself, but could perhaps be used in a bigger game.

I've thought before that it might be interesting to build a game out of the mechanic of Liar's Dice, which is my favorite bluffing game. I mentioned it to Bo one night, and we talked about it and brainstormed and came up with some ideas as to how to build a game based on Liar's Dice. In the end, we never finished any co-design using this mechanism.

Because I was going to work on it with Bo, and he is particular about intellectual property and online posts, I had respectfully withheld the ideas as to structure of the game based on Liar's Dice. I have recently revisited the idea, and decided to cull anything that Bo had contributed and use only the parts of my own design and create my own game using this Bluff Auction mechanism. As such there have been many posts in my blog recently on the subject of my own re-themed and re-structured Bluff Auction game.

I had this post from 3.5 years ago written but not published, and I don't like keeping those around - so I have edited it, updated it, and published it for posterity - feel free to ignore.