Crow Jam is our monthly game jam podcast, which you can listen to here. Once a month, Miriam and Georgia give themselves one hour to develop a new board game concept based on a handful of prompts they come up with beforehand. Below is an overview of No! My Onions!, our very first Crow Jam game idea.
THE ELEVATOR PITCH
“No! My Onions!” is an asymmetrical, 2-player quick legacy game about an onion farmer and the mischievous Onion Squirrel that plagues her farm.
Important elements:
- Hidden turns facilitated by two-sided ‘tiles’ which obscure most play elements.
- Asymmetrical play which makes each player’s experience and tactics different.
- ‘Growth’ mechanic: each onion planted in one session will turn into multiple onions for the next session.
THE LOOK
Simple, cartoony illustration, with bold colours and a ‘picture book illustration’ feel. Touchstones: Kids games like Farm Rescue and Mr Wolf; Hey! That’s My Fish; Trogdor! The Board Game.
The components include:
- 25 reversible ‘tiles’ with an ‘above ground’ and an ‘underground’ side. The ‘underground’ side of a tile has a shallow rim which allows small tokens to be hidden underneath the tile.
- Onion tokens: several dozen in two colours, blue and yellow.
- Removable stickers: including ‘improvement’ (e.g. fertiliser, irrigation) and ‘sabotage’ (e.g. a trap) stickers.
- Player tokens for the farmer and the squirrel.
Play takes place on a map made of 25 ‘tiles’ in a 5×5 grid, which is randomly generated at the beginning of the first play session. The visible sides (the ‘above ground’) of these tiles depict a farm, with areas of empty crop fields dotted with some unique elements (e.g. a water tower, a storage barn).
THE AIM
As a legacy game, the game is played over 5 sessions, each lasting only around 20 minutes. One player takes on the role of the farmer, and the other plays the Onion Squirrel. The goal of the game is to be the player who at the end of 5 sessions has collected the most onions.
TURNS
Turns are hidden and asymmetrical.
The farmer has the ability to move directly to any tile in the field of play once per turn, but her character is visible in the ‘above ground’.
The Onion Squirrel may only move normally (a certain number of spaces using up, down, left, right movement). However, her character is hidden in the ‘underground’.
On a player’s turn, the other player looks away and the active player can take some combination of actions:
– Move: a certain number of spaces orthogonally (additionally, once per turn the farmer may move anywhere)
– Dig: turn over a tile you land on, allowing you to see any hidden tokens underneath
– Improve or sabotage: add either a hidden token, a visible sticker, or both, that somehow modifies a space. For example, ‘fertiliser’ (used by either player) will allow more onions to grow/more quickly; a ‘trap’ (used by the farmer) will reduce someone’s movement for the rest of the play session if they Dig on that space.
– Plant onions: add a hidden ‘blue’ onion token. A ‘blue’ onion planted in the current session will become 2 – 5 ‘yellow’ onions at the beginning of the next session (as long as it is still in the ground when the current session ends).
– Harvest onions: remove and stash onion tokens. You may harvest blue or yellow onions.
SUMMARY
The farmer and squirrel compete to grow, find, and harvest the most onions over the 5 sessions. They will use memory, deception, and strategy to try and improve their own yields over time and hinder their opponent.
WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THIS GAME?
“No! My Onions!” is an introduction to legacy mechanics that’s accessible to a wide range of ages and players.
- A hidden arena of play, plus private turns, brings in strong elements of memory, deception and risk assessment
- Asymmetrical play creates extra depth and replayability
- The mechanic of onions ‘splitting’ between play sessions introduces investment and delayed-reward strategy.
Big Crow Games 