New Rule

Introduction: Threats to the body are many and diverse, and a strong immune system must be prepared to fight off any kind of infection at any time. Build your body’s defenses and be shrewd about how you employ that strength, and you will live a long, healthy, victorious life!

Players: 3-5

Materials:

• Regular-sized bags of identically-shaped, multicolored candies (such as M&Ms or Skittles), at least two bags per player. Ensure that the colors include red.
• Bags, hats, or bowls to hold the candies for random drawing — one per player and one for the central pool.

Setting Up: Place all the candies into a central bowl, called the common bowl. Each player draws ten from the common bowl and places them in their personal bowl. Designate a first player; play proceeds to the left.

How to Play: Players’ personal candy bowls represent their body, and each round they take turns strengthening their immune system against the possible infections that could harm it. The active player begins their turn by blindly drawing two candies from the common bowl. They examine them privately, keeping them hidden from the other players. Based on their draw, the player can either choose to keep the two random candies, or return them both to the bowl in exchange for drawing one of their choice.

Infection: After all players have drawn and kept candies in this manner, each player selects one from their bowl and holds it hidden in their hand in the center of the table. At the same moment, all players reveal their chosen candy. Whichever color is most prominent among those selected by all the players is the infection color for the round, and the number of times that color was chosen represents the strength of the infection. Players must respond to the infection by sacrificing candies from their bowl to fight it off: they return two candies of a different color than the infection to the common bowl for each level of strength the infection possesses. For example: five are playing, and at the end of the round it is revealed than two have chosen yellow, one chose green, and one chose brown.  Yellow is therefore the infection, and it has a strength of two. Each player must return four non-yellow candies to the common bowl. If a player cannot return enough off-color candies, they may instead return candies of the same color but at double rate, or four candies per infection level.

If there is a tie among chosen colors to represent the infection, all colors tied for first count as the infection: players cannot expend candies of any of those colors to fight it off, and all the tied colors count for double rate if a player cannot spend enough off-color candies.

If a player’s personal bowl is ever completely depleted, they are overwhelmed by the infection and are out of the game.

Antibodies: Alternatively to sacrificing strength, players may consume antibodies to fight the infection. Antibodies are represented by red candies. A player may fight off one level of infection by eating one red candy from their bowl. Players may employ a combination of eating red candies and returning off-color candies as they choose. They may also consume antibodies instead of returning like-color candies at double rate.

Winning the Game: Play continues until the common bowl is exhausted of candies. At the end of the game, players tally the total they posess of each color, not counting red. Whichever value is lowest represents their score. However, to this value players add the quantity of red candies remaining in their bowl to achieve their final score. High score wins the game.

Tags: Game Design //