And when the music stops...

One of the entries on my "hooks" list is "Musical chairs (but not Midnight Party clone)", which I originally wrote down because Midnight Party is so clearly (and successfully) based on that kids' party game, and I wondered where else that inspiration can go.  Pondering on that a little, I figured, heck, why not just make Musical Chairs, the board game?

I figured that the first thing I would need was some chairs, which I drew onto some blank cards, and I would need some meeples to act as kids playing.  For a first (solo) test I made a line of nine chairs (alternating facings as is traditional in party games) with three meeples of each of three colours, sitting on them.  When the music starts, the meeples get off their chairs and travel up one side of the line and down the other; when one of the end chairs has no meeple next to it, it is removed, and then when the music stops, players try to get their meeples to sit down.  Initially I was toying with movement by simultaneous selection of cards (a from a subset of a suit of playing cards for each player), and the music stopping when certain cards were played.  This didn't really feel right.

Attempt 2, showing beautifully hand illustrated game cards at their very best.

For a second attempt, I switched to two "players", each with three meeples, and I constructed a small set of special cards for each, with various movement options on them, including options to jump over chairs or barge other meeples out of the way, for a little more realism.  Each player had two cards in hand to choose from on their turn, and reshuffled their mini-deck when it was exhausted.

This version seemed to work a bit better, but I need to play it with someone else as I think much of the game will be figuring out what options the other players have available to them, and I find it particularly hard to bluff myself, so I have no idea how well this works.  I should have an opportunity to give this a spin with real people at the weekend, and will see what I need to do to make this into a working game.