Takeover - Shuffleboard Deathmatch

I think one of the best surprises from Clubhouse Games is this little gem called Takeover. It's one of the few original games in the lineup, and follows the whole Touch Generation notion of bringing videogames back to its roots. In this game, players knock their colored puck across a field, scoring points by landing on neutral squares.

Sounds tame, but here's the thing that makes it great: if you knock another player's puck off the playfield, you get all of his territory and points. Given how small most of the playfields are (there are 5 in total), it doesn't take long to realize that playing fair is a suckers game. You're better off just knocking everyone else off the screen.

So, basically, Takeover is a Deathmatch Shuffleboard. This is probably what's going to happen when my generation is old and retired.

The standard setting is for 4 players, but you can go as high as 8, at which point any pretense of playing nicely is tossed out the window. It's all down to who gets knocked out and who doesn't.

This just goes to show you how solid game design doesn't require multi-million-dollar budgets or enormous art assets or endless hours of forced gameplay. You know, arcade games. Remember those?