Alternative Title: âThe stupidest idea I have had within the space of this weekâ
A few days ago I was playing a board game with some friends and I noticed how we would always read out the text on the card we played, regardless of how often the card came up. By the end of the game, we all knew a few of the cards off by heart, including ones we had never played, just because of this repetition.
Iâve also been on a bit of a game design kick recently and have been reading a lot about board design for games. These two things combined in my head to create the question: âCan you make a board game that hypnotizes people as they play?â
Well, I had a think and I came up with an idea. I decided to share it because frankly an idea this stupid needs to be shared, so I quickly knocked up a crude but functional board for it. And yes, it is basically just snakes and ladders with a twist. I went for snakes and ladders, because it has very simple mechanics that donât get too in the way, as well as forcing players to repeat certain parts of the board.
-Each player places their counter on the Start square. Everyone rolls and the person with the highest goes first.
-The player rolls the D6 and moves the number of spaces show on the die. When they land on a square, they read out the text on the space.
-If the space you land on has the start of a green line, you move to the space the green line is attached to (which will always be down the board). Reading both the space you land on and the space you end up on.
-If the space you land on has the start of a red line, you move the space the red line is attached to (which will always be up the board). Reading both the space you land on and the space you end up on.
-Repeat until one person gets to 0.
-Additional Rule: Enforce the exact finish rule. If a player ends up on space 0 but has not moved the full amount of their roll, they move backwards the remaining amount. A player only wins when they roll exactly enough to reach the final space.
Going to be honest, the hardest thing about making this was splitting an induction in to a lot of small phrases that could be read together in random orders. Iâm still not a fan of some of the squares, but they mostly function alright.
With 3-4 players all reading the squares, it should form a crude induction that mixes in a few styles of suggestion to hopefully hit all the major bases. Of course I canât guarantee this without play testing but with the correct priming you should at least get something from at least one player.
So yes. Hypnotic snakes and ladders. I do wonder if this concept could stretch to other games, but those would require more edits to both change the board and to change the rules to fit better.
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