Boardgames you could make

This post is pretty much just transplanting a thread from Bluesky into a more durable format [1]

Here's the posts[2], then some context after:

a boardgame that does, genuinely, work for any number of players

a boardgame which takes up the entire volume of one square of an IKEA Kallax storage unit, and could not be any smaller

a boardgame with hidden information. the information is never revealed to anyone.

a boardgame where one player must be a cat

a boardgame where one player must be a dog

a boardgame whose mechanics hinge upon whether the current rules in play are Turing complete or not

(in this case, we're fine with the wussy form of Turing completeness where the possible calculations are bounded in time and memory)

a boardgame played, at least partially, while asleep

a boardgame which involves accurately and objectively quantifying whether players are actually listening to music or indeed concentrating on it (ref)

a boardgame where the moment that play begins is determined retroactively

And context... well, here are the rules I set for myself when coming up with these:

• each feels like a constraint that it is possible to satisfy
• indeed, i'm sure some already exist
• but each places a severe strain on the normal forms of a boardgame
• or otherwise highlights some aspect of the assumed context for a boardgame
• such that the form starts to break down at the edges
• also, it's at least a little bit funny

Why did I write these? I don't think I understood this clearly when I started... but I guess I'm thinking about how I enjoyed making Sausages Game this year, and how I'd like to design more boardgames next year. That started out with a constraint - can you make a boardgame about bluffing, but where you have no choice about whether you're bluffing or not [3]. It turns out, yes. Although the version that is actually good weakens that restriction. That's fine, I ended up with something good!

So, here's some restrictions to design against. I think it's likely that an attempt to design any of these games would fail, but I also think it's possible it would lead somewhere interesting. If you make the attempt, let me know how it goes! And I guess maybe I'll try, too.

[1: might be a less durable format, we'll see]

[2: worth clicking through, there's some riffing in replies not captured here]

[3: I guess I was thinking in part about the PKD book The Game-Players of Titan, where characters play a bluffing game against telepaths. They end up defeating them by randomly either a placebo, or a drug that blocks telepathy, such that they don't know if they're able to read minds or not.]