Name of game: 1. Egyptian Rat Slap, 2. BS
Creator of game: 1. Albert Morehead, 2. Bernard Kemp
Target audience: 2+ anyone
Platform of the game: Playing cards
Egyptian Rat Slap has a component of slapping and being quick, which is similar to a mechanic of our game, and BS has the component of bluffing which is similar to another mechanic of our game. So, I chose to play these two games.
There are two mechanics involved in ERS, first is to draw a card and place it face up in the center. Second is to slap when certain conditions are met. The player who slaps the fastest wins the round and gets all the cards. Due to the two mechanics, the fun created is of the following types – challenge and fellowship.
Since the only fun being created is due to the thrill of slapping in the center and being the fastest, the game soon becomes mundane and ridiculous. It lacks story and other types of fun. The magic circle is not much useful because a player could stay out of the game (have no cards) and not necessarily pay attention to slap since the player could get in (slap and win cards) at any point in time as long as there are more than one players still active.
BS is an interesting game because it has an aspect of bluffing which gives it a fresh appearance in every round since some players might be bluffing randomly and there might be no patterns so each turn is completely new. The fun is of the following types: challenge and fellowship.
While the types of fun are similar to ERS, the game feels different because of the mechanic of bluffing and another mechanic which allows a player to call another player out for bluffing. There is a sense of fellowship because players often end up colluding in stages when a specific player is about to win the game (by getting rid of all their cards). This is an interesting dynamic that emerges naturally, although the game does not intend to create a such a dynamic directly.
To sum up, these two games covered different mechanics of our game. However, our game differs from these two because of the social aspect which we include by using “juicy” questions to be answered by the players. This makes every round of the game even more fresh because of completely new questions that are encountered in each round.
