During our first meeting, we decided to share our ideas for a card game and get a clear understanding of what the goals and mechanics of each game were. We then chose to commit to a game that would involve some sort of auction theme, knowing that this would create a competitive atmosphere between players and would be entertaining as well. The general idea of the game is to have players be the highest bidder of a particular item and maintain the most amount of money as possible. We continued to develop the basics of the game, regarding the types of cards available to the players, catch-up mechanisms and a points system.
The game will have 2 decks of cards; one will be referred to as the player money cards, the other the auction item cards. Each player will receive 5 randomly dealt money cards and will also have 2 other cards that will be of value (the exact distinction of these cards has not been clarified). Through out the game, each player will bid on a particular item that is flipped from the auction item card pile. It is the player's responsibility to bid high enough for the item, but also be responsible about how they spend his or her cards. It will be a rule that at least one money card MUST be put down for every item auctioned, and one less card will be retrieved than the number that was put down. So, if a player decides to use 3 money cards for an item, they will take back two from the money bank after that turn. Our motive for this is to encourage the players to think wisely about what items are important to their success in the game.
We also began to think of ways to change up the game to make it fun and unpredictable. Discussion was made about having certain categories of auction item cards that would be worth more points if a whole set was bought. We will also include dummy cards as well as cards known as Big Ticket items that will either be worth a significant amount of points at the end of the game, or be worth very little. These features of the game will allow for the game to remain unpredictable until the scores are tallied at the end. Ideally this game seems like it would be best for 4-5 players.
