The story of our spinning top board game named SKUNKED begins in the very early days of the COVID pandemic. We hand some time on our hands and decided to try out a new idea. The base of the idea was “can a player manipulate a spinning top on a board that tilts” what we found out was yes the more you tilt the board in one direction the top will react and move away from the angle that is being applied. Now that we know it’s possible how to we make a challenging, fun and unique game from this new discovery. Well let me tell you it took as many as 25 porotypes before we had a finished complete game.
The first and most important design challenge was to figure out how to make the board tilt and then spring back to a level state so we knew it had to be springs and where to put them. The four legs the go in the corner hole was the most logical place so we sourced heavy duty springs and slipped them over the leg and placed the board on top of them and to everybody’s surprise it did the job perfectly.
The next challenge was to design the board with landing holes and fall though holes. Landing holes are the designated holes that the players aim for during regular play and fall through holes are the infamous holes that the players want to avoid because your turn will be over if you top falls through.
The tops are a ultra simple design that ride on a single ball that spin with a good twist of your fingers. There are 10 total – five for each player then load on each side on the board.
With the board loaded with tops the first player starts by getting a top spinning in the center of the board as close an you can to the red circle. Now the player will get busy pressing on the board strategically guiding the tops to one of the landing holes avoiding the fall through holes. If the player is successful in landing a top then their turn will continue with starting another top and repeating the steps above but if the tops fall through one of the holes then their turn is over. Now the next player starts their turn. If a player can land all 5 of their tops in one turn before their opponent has a chance to go they hav’ve SKUNKED.