Nice Games Club - a gamedev podcast! Nice Games Jam: "I’m Holding It for a Friend"
Oct 2, 2025
00:00
We invite Joanna May into the clubhouse again in this supersized episode to design a game about stowing illicit goods into spacecraft as it's being built!
(Note: Minor hiccup with the audio recording in the first 2 minutes, so Lydia is off mic briefly but it fixes itself.)
- We mention Dogpile!, a game we made in a previous game jam.
Prompt
Design a puzzle game about loading passengers and/or cargo into various spacecraft (or other transport).
Game type
Tabletop game
Player count
4 or more
Rules
- The ship is a pad of paper with outline of ship (legal pad sized)
- The interior is blank, what you draw is the interior spaces
- Each turn, the freighter captain draws the modules
- False walls, freezers, to shape what you can put in there
- They have their own secret goal
- Each turn, the other players are smuggling things (they don’t know about what others are doing)
- Contraband
- Each turn they can put one thing in there or move a thing
- Maybe you have to slide it only, you can’t pick it up after it’s been added
- Each game has an ending determination and then also a scoring system
- Everyone loses if ship gets caught
- Hidden role game?
- Freighter Captain
- Makes the ship
- Contraband smuggler
- Tries to add the most of contraband as they can
- Honest worker
- Wants to add the most of the goal as possible
- Inspector
- Wants to find the smuggler
- Freighter Captain