Twice a month, Georgia and Miriam give themselves one hour to devise an original game concept based on a selection of prompts. Below is an overview of our simultaneous dice circus game, Wacky Feet.
THE ELEVATOR PITCH
Wacky Feet is a frenetic 3-player dice-rolling, observation and set collection game about mischievous clowns. Players take control of one of three clowns and enter a three-ring circus where dice are the performers. With the timely intervention of their clown feet, they help the main acts to pull off trapeze, juggling and tightrope tricks (represented by sets of dice) which they score independently.
THE LOOK
This game is heavily themed for an after-dark, kitsch/spooky, neon circus, with black and dark grey backdrops and bright neon details.
It comes packed flat in a box and when opened out, the playing area becomes “The Big Top”, consisting of a trefoil-shaped area surrounded by low “walls” and made up of three overlapping rings. In the centre of the area is a low, sloped hexagonal shaped dice tower with a “basket” or “balcony” at its top, designed simply so that dice fed into the basket will roll evenly down the outer sides of the tower. On the edge of each ring there is an oversized clown (roughly the same height as the diameter of one ring), each of whose feet is a flipper which, when activated by a pinball-style trigger, pops up and will send dice flying inwards.
The components for Wacky Feet include:
- The Big Top, clowns, and tower as described above
- 18 Trick Dice
- 30 Trick Tokens in three types
- 3 Scoring breakdown cards.
Trick Dice are black, with neon icons each in one of three neon colours (green, orange, white). There are three types of icon (spiral, triangle, and diamond) and each die has a unique combination of sides, such that every combination of colour-icon is represented 12 times. The Trick Tokens come in three different types represented by colour and shape. Each token is black with a border and a symbol in a contrasting colour. Trapeze tokens have a blue border and blue trapezoid symbol; Juggler tokens have a pink border and a pink circle symbol; and Tightrope tokens have a violet border and violet string symbol.
THE AIM
When the game kicks off, all players will be simultaneously flicking their clown feet to re-roll dice and watching the circus arena to find combinations of dice that will let them score Trick Tokens. If they can be quicker with their eyes and hands than their opponents, they’ll collect the most Trick Tokens – or a winning set – and become the victor!
SET UP
The Big Top is assembled and every player seats themselves behind a clown. The Trick Tokens are sorted into their three types and put within easy reach of all players (multiple piles might need to be made to make reaching tokens fair). The 18 Trick Dice are fed through the basket of the dice tower, and allowed to land within the arena.
Each player is given a Scoring Breakdown card. This shows, for each type of Trick Token, the correct set of dice a player would need to collect. For example:
- For a Juggler token a player needs to collect three dice which have the same symbol all in different colours.
- For a Trapeze token a player needs to collect three dice all with different symbols in the same colour.
- For a Tightrope token a player needs to collect two matching pairs.
TURNS
There are no turns in Wacky Feet – it’s “Hungry Hungry Hippos” style, simultaneous play! All players count down to Go! and may now begin trying to score Trick Tokens. When a player sees a correct set, they must grab all the dice in the set, say the name of the trick they are scoring, collect a Trick Token of the relevant type and then return the dice to the top of the central dice tower.
When a player sees that dice have landed on one of their clown’s feet, they can deliberately “re-roll” those dice by hitting the trigger to make their clown kick!
SUMMARY
This frantic play continues until one type of token has been completely depleted, at which point the player who takes the last token of that type calls Stop!
Players then count up their collected Tokens and score them. The player with the most points earned wins!
WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THIS GAME?
This is a novelty game which uses observation and reflexes in combination with frantic simultaneous play. It’s a real challenge for fast thinking, while being fun for all the family!
Big Crow Games 