Skip the Bag Card Game Design
As part of my master’s project at Michigan State University, I designed Skip the Bag, a fast-paced card drafting game where the players play as sea turtles in a highly plastic polluted marine environment. The goal is to survive while navigating through these life threatening conditions. The last swimming sea turtle wins. The intention of the game is to have the players experience the struggles faced by our aquatic wildlife due to the mass accumulation of plastic debris in our seas and oceans.
‘Skip the Bag’ is a fast-paced card drafting game where the players play as sea turtles in a highly plastic polluted marine environment. The goal is to survive while navigating through these life threatening conditions.
Game Overview and Setup
Contents
Card Deck : 95 cards
Health Tokens : 35 tokens (7 different colors)
The card deck has a total of 95 cards, that include 30 food cards, 30 plastic cards, 15 action cards and 20 special cards. There are 7 different colored health tokens, 5 of each totaling up to 35 tokens.
Gameplay and Mechanics
‘Skip the Bag’ is a card drafting game, and so the core mechanic of the game is drawing cards. All the players start with 5 health tokens which is the maximum health. When the players lose all of their health tokens, they die.
Each round, players have to draw a card and place it face up on their side of the table, so that it’s visible to everyone.
If they draw any of the three types of plastic cards, they take a damage to their health and have to place the token back in the bag.
There is no limit of how many actions a player can take during their turn.
After using a card the players have to discard that card. Each player can have a maximum of 5 cards at a time.
If they already have 5 cards, before drawing a card during their turn, they have to discard a card.
The players can also heal themselves by using food cards. They can discard any 2 food cards to get a lost health token back.
Special cards such as shuffle and peek into the deep can only be used before drawing a card on their turn.
Special cards such as Escape and Untangle can be used to help other players survive. However, it’s up to the players to decide whether they want to use those cards to help another player or keep it for themselves.
If more than one player survives at the end, the player with the highest health would win. However, if the surviving players have the same health, the player with the least number of plastic cards or more number of food cards wins the game.
The average playtime for one round is about 20 minutes and it works best with 4 players.
