Sons of Noah: A Biblical Collection Game

This week's mandatory non-digital game assignment was to create a collection game of some sort. This means the objective of the game must be to collect a certain amount of items in order to win. After spending many hours volunteering at a nearby cat shelter, my group mate Divakar Dev threw out the idea of rescuing animals. I then took this idea a step further and suggested we make the game about Noah's arc.

The thought process behind this wonderful game:

Before

Image taken from www.allpetnews.com

After

Screencap from Super Noah's Arc 3D

Yeah, that's pretty much how it happened.

After realising that only one player could be Noah, we decided to have each of the players take the role of one of his sons (Shem, Ham, Japeth, and Bill (who is both fictional, and adopted for the sake of 4 player functionality)). Each son of Noah is in a race to round up 5 pairs of animals in order to win their father's love and respect. The first player to collect 5 pairs of animals is the victor.

Here's how the board came together:

Each coloured square represents an ecosystem, each housing a specific group of animals. (These colours are not final and will match those of the cards below)

Here's a close-up of one of the ecosystems. On the full-size board, these are all inter-twined as seen above.

The Animal Cards: (Fun fact: We almost had unique male and female animal cards, but we figured the game might take too long to win among other issues. As a result, animal cards contain no gender.)

RULES:
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Players: 2-4

Set-up: Players shuffle the animal cards and put each pile into its respective zone. Players then roll for highest to see who goes first. 

Play: Players take turns going around the board to the different zones while trying to collect matching pairs of animals. Movement is made by rolling the die. Players must collect 5 pairs of animals before they can take off in their ship and escape the end of the world. Players must land on an animal space in order to pick up a card from that zone’s pile. If a player lands on a space with words, players must follow whatever is written on the space.

Before a player takes a turn, they have the option to attempt to trade animals with another player. There is no ratio on trading animals, i.e. a player can attempt to trade 3 animals for only 1 from another player. A player can deny any trade without question. If a player’s trade is successful, that players turn ends. However, if the trade is denied, then the player may roll and continue their turn as normal.

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Things I like about the game:

Overall, the thing I like most about the game is it's premise. From the way it was conceptualized to the final product, there was no shortage of lulz.

Things that could have been better:

If I could, I would add a more competitive, head-to-head element to the game. I think the game would be significantly more entertaining, if Noah's sons could have ship battles, and maybe even kidnap each-other's animals. After all, Noah is a hard man to please, and these sons will do whatever it takes to be guaranteed safety from the great flood.

=)