The first Game Design Concepts lecture was published on Monday. It's basically an introductory lecture with some basic vocabulary so that those participating can have a level ground of discussion (game studies is still so new that there has yet to be any real formulation of keywords). After discussing what makes a game, Schreiber gave us a 15 minute design a basic game challenge. Below is what I came up with while serving on a grand jury on Tuesday:
Design
Race for Candy is a basic race-to-the-end game. It can be done on paper (w/pen) or on a sidewalk (w/chalk), requires a minimum of 2 players, and at least one two-faced coin. Draw a straight line and divide it into as many sections as you'd like as illustrated above.
Theme
It is Halloween and you and your friend are trying to collect as much candy as possible before getting home for the night.
Rules
Players flip a two-sided coin. One side, say heads, let's the player move one square forward, while the other, tails, wins the flipper two forward movements while forcing the other player to move backwards one. For each space you wind up in at the end of the turn you gain "one candy" (you can simply mark how many you have on a piece of paper. For example, if the players are at the starting line and the first player flips heads, she moves forward one space and gets one candy. If she were to flip tails, she would move ahead two boxes, but would only earn one candy (her opponent would move back one square but would not earn a candy). The game ends when both players have reached the finish line. The winner has the most candies, the loser just gets to laugh at the winner when they have to go to the dentist for cavities.
Observations
I added the head = 2 steps forward, one step back mechanic because I wanted to create some sort of tension between the players. While a player would want to move forward on heads as much as possible (because they get the most candy that way), tails would have a benefit (or not, depending upon which player you are) as well. For a basic game thought out in between testimony, it's not too too bad =P