3 new ideas... 1 new game! ... Part 1: Telescoping game idea

 Recently I've had 3 new game ideas, inspired by something I saw on Twitter or heard on a podcast, one of which has already graduated to a physical prototype with 1 test, and a TTS mod (as yet un-played) with some adjustments!

Lest this post get overly long, I'll break it into 3 parts, one for each of the game ideas...

Telescoping game idea

The first idea I'll describe was inspired by something I heard in Keith Burgun's interview with Soren Johnson on his Strategy Can Be Fun podcast. Keith had said something about how Civ games have an interesting aspect in the beginning of building up a city, but after a point, you have so many cities that it becomes tedious to micromanage them all. My thoughts went immediately to "If it's fun to micromanage a city up to a point, then after that point, what if you didn't have to micromanage it anymore?" I'm effectively unfamiliar with everything in the realm of digital games, so I wondered if there existed a game that lets you micromanage a city or something, then at some point takes control of that city away from you, essentially letting it exist as a single unit with some stats associated with it.

Of course, I think of things in terms of tabletop, so I imagined a game divided into 3 or 4 Ages, where in the first age your units are individual humans (or maybe families), and you build up a city. Then in Age 2, your units are cities, and you build up a country. Then in Age 3, your units are countries, and you build up planets. Then finally in Age 4, your units are planets, and you build up a galaxy.

• Age 1 would be kind of you-vs-the-game, like standard euro-style multiplayer solitaire (or maybe even intentionally, actually solitaire). 
• Age 2 would be kind of you-vs-your-neighbors. 
• Age 3 would be kind of you-and-neighbors-vs-other-"teams" (since countries would be made up of cities from multiple different players). 
• And (here's an interesting twist) Age 4 could somehow be your-table-vs-another-table(!). Like, maybe Age 4 is cooperative, and it's just comparing your score vs other plays of the game

I used to have an idea for a "4X" game that was actually a series of individual games that could be played independently, or in succession, where for example, the end state of EXPLORE becomes the setup/start state for EXPAND. Maybe this could be like that, where each of those Ages is actually an independent game, and you could play them in succession, "attaching" them to each other if you want.

This sounds ambitious, but for the most part it sounds to me like it could work. And if each of the ages is a separate game, then (like my previous 4X idea) they could be played individually as standalone games, or combined to create a bigger game. As for theming, a little thought on that led me to a potentially promising idea... I've always wanted to do a game based on Moana - specifically that song The Way, which describes the people as voyagers, going from island to island (and presumably setting up camp on them). So with that in mind:

Age 1-- Let's make this tribespeople building up the best island they can. There could be "stats" such as population and boats - maybe the same resources builds both boats and houses, so you either have big population and few boats, or small population and many boats, stuff like that. Also, maybe you can do some farming/fishing to get an export good type of thing. For the most part this would be a multiplayer solitaire style game, where you perhaps draft things from a common pool, but otherwise the interaction is very low as you concentrate on your own player board.

Age 2-- Your tribe starts with 1 island, with stats (like Population, Boats, maybe Export), chosen from a few possible options. The one you start with could depend on the configuration of your island board at the end of Age 1, or if you skipped Age 1, then you could just start with a random island. The map has many uninhabited islands, and during the game you'll move your boats and settle them. Maybe your tribe's Population and Boats stats inform how much/how far you can move, and how many/what size settlements you can place at a time. Maybe Exports comes into it in a set collection way (exports of new islands could be printed on board, maybe the ones that match your starting one - or that DON'T match it - are more valuable to you). Now you're competing directly with your opponents for islands but maybe the map is big enough that you're effectively only competing with your neighbors.

Age 3-- Let's divvy the ocean up into regions, where you get 1 cube for each of the islands you had in that region. The regions are now interacting somehow (trade? war?), and you are aligned - at least a little - with the players who share your region, maybe in an area control way. Maybe the goal here is to add cubes of your color to other regions via trade (swapping cubes? adding cubes?) or war (replacing a cube), and scoring is by area majority.

Age 4 -- Maybe it's a little crazy, and outside the scope of the game, but maybe Age 4 could be a cooperative game, with all the players trying to make the best "global" community they can (maybe this is just the whole ocean area where these islands are). Then other groups can compete with that via score.

In talking this through with my friend Mohan, it occurred to me that maybe a 3-act structure would work better... Multiplayer solitaire -> Interactive -> Cooperative, and again, each of those being playable as a standalone game. For players committing to the entire 3-game "campaign." it might be very interesting to see how the culmination being cooperative affects the dynamics in the earlier games. In fact, it might be more interesting if that 3rd game were only MAYBE cooperative, so players could be presented with meta-dynamics like you see in Battlestar Galactica: "My 1st loyalty card says human, so do I try hard to make the humans win? Or hedge my bets and try to keep us on the edge, just in case I turn out to be a Cylon when the 2nd loyalty card comes out?"

I feel like this is a fairly ambitious idea, but it sounds kind of attainable - maybe more-so than the 4X series game idea. Maybe it's got some legs?