Swap Clops Card Game

A long time ago, I designed a tile-swapping game featuring little cyclops creatures drawn by Kari Fry. I wasn't entirely satisfied with how that game turned out, so it's lingered in my mind for some time. Here is my current thought on how it would be implemented as a simple euro-style card trading game.

You'll notice these mechanics from my previous post "Make Me An Offer," which adapted Apples to Apples mechanics into a straight strategy game. The card values are based on the beans in the classic game Bohnanza. Hopefully combining the two with a dash of something original makes a satisfying game. You tell me!

Click the link below for the print-and-play prototype. I literally whipped this up in an hour, so there are some rough areas. Specifically, the cards need a miniature suit icon on the top corners for ease of reference. Ah well, such is the life in rapid iteration. :)

» Print-and-Play Cards


SETUP
Shuffle all the cards and deal five to each player. Set the remaining cards as a draw deck and set aside space for discarded cards. Also set aside space for each player to have three stacks of cards, called "sets."  Finally, gather a general supply of chips representing points.

Example Setup for Two Player Game

ON YOUR TURN...


STEP 1: Place one or two cards from your hand into one of your sets. These cards must share a shape or a color in common. Once you have established that common trait, no other cards can be added to that set unless they also share that trait in common.

Example Step 1: Collect. You add two reds to your collection. From now on, only red cards can be added to this set.

STEP 2: Reveal the top card from the draw deck. Your opponent may reveal one or two cards from her hand. Place these revealed cards in the middle of the table. You are being offered these cards.

Example Step 2: Offering. A red square is revealed from the deck. Your opponent offers a blue circle and a tan circle.

STEP 3: You may accept one or two of the offered cards and place them directly into one or two of your sets. If you have no room in your sets for one of your accepted cards, you must SCORE one of your sets for gold coins to make room. (See STEP 5 for details.) Any unaccepted cards go into the discard pile. If you accept a card offered by an opponent, they earn the points noted at the top left of that card.

Example Step 3: Accepting. You accept the red square and the blue circle. Because your opponent offered the blue circle, she earns 6 points. You did not accept the tan circle, so it goes into the discard pile.

STEP 4: Draw up cards into your hand until you have a full hand of five cards.

Example Step 4: Drawing Up. You draw two more cards to fill your hand back up to five.

SCORE: At the end of your turn, you may score one or more sets. When you score a set, the chart at the bottom of the cards tells you how many points you can earn. You score points for the common trait of the whole set. So, if your set shares a shape in common, you only score points for the shapes, not the colors. (The small parenthetical numbers show how frequently that trait appears in the deck.) Once you have scored a set, discard those cards. You now have a free space to start a new set.

Example Score: The chart at the bottom of the card shows how many cards earn one, two, three or four points. Four circles earn one point, seven circles earn two points, and so on. Three yellows earn one point, five yellows earn two points, and so on.

ENDGAME: When you've gone through the deck, once (for two players), twice (for three players) or three times (for four players), the game is over. The player with the most points wins!

Swap Clops

Clops are one-eyed creatures with lots of personality. You're going to move them around and collect groups with matching faces. Score points by collecting lots of Clops! Score bonus points by collecting Clops with the same likes!

Clops have three main characteristics: Shapes, Faces, and Likes. First, Clops come in three shapes, either circles, squares or triangles. Second, Clops have five faces: Angry (Red), Worried (White), Serious (Blue), Bleeeh! (Green) and Happy (Yellow). And lastly, Clops have five likes: Sunshine, Apples, the Moon, Stars, and Books.

» Development Status: Beta, Dormant
» Illustrations: Kari Fry


Stuff You Need
A supply of 90 Clop Tiles [These designs are very beta.]
2-4 Players


Set Up
Arrange a grid of 8x8 tiles, randomly drawn from the supply. Make sure they're all rotated in the same direction.


Click to enlarge


How to Play
Each player takes turns, starting with the youngest player.

1) Swap two Clops
On your turn, choose two Clops with the same shape and swap their places.

2) Collect Groups of Clops
When you create a contiguous group of four or more Clops with the same face, collect the tiles in those groups. Place them face down in front of you. It is possible to make two groups in the same turn. Tiles only count as a group vertically or horizontally, not diagonally. If a tile has a wall, that wall separates it from its neighbors on the other side, effectively preventing that Clop from joining a group on that side.

3) Add new Clops
Fill the empty spaces with new random Clops from the supply. Fill in each space in order, starting from left to right, top to bottom. If you end up creating new groups in doing so, you do not collect them.


End of the Game and Scoring
The game ends when there are no new Clops to place. Continue the round until all players have had a turn. Then, score points.

You score one point for every Clop you collected.

There is also a +5 point bonus if you collected the most of a single like. For example, if you collected the most sunshine, you get an extra 5 points. If you collected the most Apples, you also get an extra 5 points. And so on, an extra 5 points for each like, if you're the player who collected the most of that like.

The player with the most points wins!

[In the Lab] Swap Clops

I've been playing a lot of tile-swapping puzzle games like Bejeweled, Tetris Attack and ShapeShift HD. As is often the case when I play digital games, my mind wanders to how I can make an analog conversion, with new mechanics unique to a tabletop game.

Then I started thinking about the success of Angry Birds. Now, there have been tons of missile-launching video games, but one of the big things Angry Birds had going for it was the personality in each bird and pig. (It's important to note the WORMS franchise was doing the "cute animals as avatars in a missile game" thing for a long time in the 90s.)

And then I stumbled on a weird title. Swap Clops. It was going to be a Pitch Tag for Fred, but I couldn't give it up. I wanted to make something with it. A game about swapping eyeballs among cyclopses? Nah. Maybe "Clop" is a new branded name for the "floating ball with a giant eye" monster archetype. (I heard somewhere WotC has a trademark on the term "Beholder.")

So, Swap Clops is my take on the tile-swapping puzzle genre, adding characters with personality to the mix. Above, you see Kari Fry's concept drawings for the clops. Look for more game notes to come!