Chewy game is a single player physical game made for both children and adults. This is a game that takes appropriation of Gummy Bears. Originally, I wanted to take advantage of the bouncy physical feature of the candies. Then I realized that Gummy Bears are linked to childhood memories for a lot of people. My friends told me that their parents would give them gummy bears as a reward for accomplishing goals. And they always appear when it was festival season and were giving out as a present… however, in my case, gummy bears are connected to the image of liquor and bar games. I used to love dipping the gummy bears in liquor bottles and took them out the next day. They will have a great taste and become 2 times bigger than before. I thought it would be interesting to take the form (of candy) and the mechanism of bar game (which are usually restricted to children) to make a game for children.
During playtesting, I got some playtester noted that this grab and throw mechanic is very similar to knucklebone game (jacks), a game that has multiple origins and is played worldwide. My cousin told me that my game remind him of Assyk, a traditional sport of Kazakh cultures, instead of gummy bears, they use real knucklebones of lambs.
Preparation:
a bag of gummy bears and take two of the same color’s (usually there will be 5 colors in a bag) and a plushie.
How to play:
- Scatter these 10 gummy bears on table (shuffle?)
- Throw the plushie up high (the higher the more time you got for picking the gummy bears.)
- Speed Grab one gummy bear at a time and catch the falling plushie (with one hand).
- Throw again and grab a pile of gummy bears (that should be 5 of them)
- If failed to catch the plushie, discard all of the bears you have and start over.
Goal(s):
- Because this is a game that takes practice to be good at, as you play longer you should be less hesitated and require less time to pick the gummy bears in correct colors.
- Try not to fail catching the plushie
2nd iteration: (another version)
I thought I would be great to have the player eat the gummy bears at some point of the gameplay. Since it is edible and I gave the volunteer playtesters gummy bears as a reward anyways.
My professor suggested that this game is really about restriction. Both in time and physically. It is hard to catch and grab by only one hand. So I kind of wanted to push the limit of the restrictions (balance).
To make it easier, I replaced the plushie with a small beanbag.
- Wash your hands & make sure the gummy bears are edible
- Same as the old rules 1-5.
- But this time, once you succeed one attempt to grab and catch, pass the gummy bear to your other hand.
- Focus on this hand and throw up the gummy bear, quickly flip your hand and catch it by the back of your hand.
- Balance and let it lying safely on the back of your hand while throwing up the beanbag using the other hand.
- Grab & catch your next target
- Congrats! This counts as a round and you can finally consume the gummy bear.
- Repeat until you got (eat) all 5 of the gummy bears of different colors.