Simulation

Schwarzer Freitag is a stock trading game with a built-in bubble to explode. The players are buying shares on a growing stock market, but at one time in the game the prices will crash. The players try to find out the right time to sell their shares and buy gold and silver (these are the victory points), before the market crashes.

The actions of all players change the probability of the crash. When they start selling, the probability of the crash will get higher. If they only buy shares then the crash will come later.

To win the game, you have to have a close look at what the others do to be in the position to sell the highest share at the right time, to get the most money. But the silver/gold price will rise too, and you can also win by buying silver/gold early in the game.

This game is the first game in the Freitag-Projekt:

Freitag(Friday) is a game project started on Friday 24th of October in Essen. I, Friedemann Friese, will work on that project for the next Five years on every Friday. I will work Five, Fifteen,... minutes (In German twenty-five, thirty-five,.. starts with an F, too) up to Fifteen hours on that project, but only Fridays.

The game will be published in Five years on the Friday of Spiel '13 in Essen. It will not be shown on Wednesday or Thursday.

I have a blog (by now only in German) on my website, where I show my work on that project.

By now I really don't know what will happen, but I have a lot of time......

Now it happened that the first game is ready and I found a company for publishing (the company is very interested, but it is not totally sure by now)

I will add the new second game to the database.

Moby Dick, or, The Card Game is an adventure card game designed for 2-4 players, with additional rules for solitaire play. Based on Herman Melville's classic novel, Moby Dick combines cooperative and competitive play in an attempt to loosely simulate life on a 19th century whaleship.

The game is centered around three decks of cards: the Sea, the Sailor, and the Whale. After receiving an initial crew of sailors, players take turns at the topmast, where they draw Sea cards to advance the game. These cards contain various creatures and events, compelling actions between players or triggering the secondary phase of the game – the whale hunt. During a whale hunt, each player begins by choosing a small group of their sailors to lower after the whale. Play progresses much like the primary gameplay, with players taking turns defending against the whale's assaults and returning the favors.

As the game unfolds, players gain oil from defeating whales or from certain events, which can be used to hire new sailors after others are lost at sea. Over time, key events (Chapters) will be drawn, and after a certain number Moby Dick will cease evading the ship and engage when sighted. This last battle is to the death, and only one player will survive. Call him the winner, or simply, Ishmael.

This game attempts to mirror life events many people go through from going to college, raising a family, buying a home, working and retiring.

The intent of the game is to have the most assets at the end of the game, assets are earned primarily by working and earning tokens with dollars amount on them. Additionally the first person to complete the course gets additional money tokens.

There is a very linear board that you move along by spinning a wheel or landing on spaces that tell you to move to a specific space or forward or back. There are a handful of intersections where you can choose to go one direction or another but they ultimately have similar spaces and meet back up quickly. There are a handful of choices regarding insurance and investments but for the most part it is a game of luck.

In the near future, nanofacturing techniques will allow incredible new materials to be built atom by atom. But they can only be built in the zero-gravity and high-vacuum conditions in space. Various private and government enterprises race to establish a buckytube mechanosynthesis factory on a suitable carbonaceous asteroid. To do so, they accumulate tanks of water in orbiting fuel depots, to be used as rocket propellant. Also needed are remote-controlled robonauts to do the grunt work.

The key to success is water in LEO (low Earth orbit). At first, water will be expensively upported out of the deep gravity well of Earth. But for a third the fuel and energy, water can be supplied from Luna, the moons of Mars, or other nearby hydrated objects. Extracting resources at the work site is called In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU). Whoever develops ISRU technology able to glean water from space rather than Earth will gain the strategic high ground to make money through exoglobalization.

Now in its second edition. The second edition expansion (aka High Frontier Colonization) is now available for preorders with an expected publication in the summer of 2013. (this expansion is compatible with the 1st and 2nd editions).

Board is set up in view of a television/VCR and players watch a videotape of simulated action and narration filmed on the set of the Star Trek series. Players assume the roles of the few remaining on-board crew members of the U.S.S. Enterprise, which is docked for repairs.

The players (watching the tape) see a renegade Klingon (named KAVOK) hijack the ship with only themselves aboard with him. He periodically appears on the television screen (which is a simulation of different communication view screens aboard the ship) and talks to the players during the game.

KAVOK's intention is to use the Federation ship to to attack the Klingon Empire and instigate a Federation/Klingon war. He also plans to gloriously die in battle along with the remaining crew. KAVOK will create setbacks and obstacles for the players as they attempt to gain access to the bridge and regain control of the ship. The journey to the Klingon Empire takes 60 minutes of real time game-playing (displayed on screen). They play against the clock, and if nobody wins, they all lose.

Play consists of rolling the die, moving around the board (which represents the Enterprise), drawing cards and interacting with the video of KAVOK until they reach the bridge and win, or the time expires and they lose.

NOTE: This game cannot be checked out due to being a "Rare/Protected" game. Playing this at Spielbound will require renting out a backroom and bringing a VHS player & monitor to play.