Trust Falls
ROLE
Lead Designer
DESCRIPTION
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YEAR
2035
GENRE
Battle Royal
PLATFORM
PlayStation
ROLE
Designer
Tabletop - Card
OVERVIEW
In a cartoonish land where anvils and pianos can be dropped on your head and you survive, people go to the long-dried up Trust Falls to play a game of wit with their friends. Every player picks an item to place in a box to simultaneously drop it on their neighbor's head unless they choose to protect themselves with a helmet. Mixed in the items are light objects that do no harm but can cause a helmet to be wasted!
PLAYERS
2-6
GAMPLAY LENGTH
5-10 Minutes
CATEGORIES
Card Game
Fast-Paced
Social
Deception
Deduction
DECISION STRATEGY: 3/5
COMPONENT COMLEXITY: 1/5
LUCK'S HELP: 3/5
DETAILS
DESCRIPTION
Inspired by Looney Tunes where characters can play tricks on one another with no real, lasting threat from mortal wounds, Trust Falls uses a simple Rock, Paper, Scissors-like gameplay where players drop objects on their neighbors heads or protect their own. Starting the game, the direction of play is determined using a directional reference card for the table. During play, players use cards that either Attack against the person in the direction of play, Defend against the person opposite the direction of play, or Bluff against the person in the direction of play to get them to waste their defenses.
Each player has the same number of cards in their hand and plays their cards simultaneously keeping the game moving at a rapid pace. In traditional turn-based card games, waiting for players to take their turns can get frustrating for other players, there is point tracking that determines winners after the game, or players need to get rid of their cards as a part of the game. Trust Falls has all players doing the same thing at the same time creating a much more social suspense as players pay attention to what others are doing and keep the game moving. If a player loses enough lives, they are eliminated and the circle closes creating a clear winner at the end.
ADDITIONAL DESIGN NOTES
After my first game was a high-card, high-complexity asymmetric game, I wanted to make something quicker and simpler. Trust Falls only uses 3 different types of cards to play with, players all have the same number of cards in their hand, and all take action at the same time. Players are all attacking in one direction, defending in the opposite, and bluffing everyone.
The rules have 2 rounds of dealing and then sudden death which is rarely even reached. Gameplay is quick and can vary slightly from round to round creating more social variability due to the simplicity of the cards.
The cards have identifiers in different areas to distinguish the types of cards from one another, bold type for sight difficulty, colors that have been verified on colorblindness charts for differentiation, and a picture for identity of the item as well.
RESOURCES