A couple of weeks ago I wrote about an experiment to see if I could consistently and sustainably fund good causes through an online product/service.
I’m delighted to release the first version of Twumps – my social network trading game, built for social good. Right now it is beta – which means it works (pretty well actually) but is actively being tested and might break. It also means that I’m on standby to fix it pretty quickly if it breaks and that I’m super ready to chat to people to make it better.
Inspiration
Twumps is inspired by Top Trumps – the card trading series of games. In Twumps, instead of super heroes, you have your followers from Twitter (who have stats!). I’ve varied it a little to make it faster to play and perhaps a little more interesting.
Each player builds a stash of cards created from upto 100 of their twitter followers
Each game is between 2 players and a deck made up of 10 of their cards. They play until they have turned over all their cards. Each turn is played by the ‘turn starter’ picking a statistic from their displayed card that they believe can beat the equivalent statistic on their opponents drawn card. A player wins the turn by having a higher stat than their opponent’s card. A game is won by the person who won most cards.
The winning player gets to keep those followers (only in Twumps – not in Twitter – sorry!). The losing player does not keep the cards they won in the game.
A player’s total wins are used to determine their place in the leaderboard:
Easy to Play
Twumps is really easy to play and I have taken feedback from early players that they would appreciate a tour of how to use get about in the game. There is only one view in the game – your current card. I may add a little more complexity later, but for now, you simply select a stat from the next card in your game deck. Check out bits of the tour:
What Next?
Building what I have is only the first step – getting something out there that people can play, derive some enjoyment from. The next steps are getting as many people playing it as possible, getting their feedback to improve it and beginning to discover what I can charge for (it’s all donation based – but I think there should be minimums).
I really need your help
Twumps is a novel idea, to my knowledge there is nothing like this online anywhere. I’m going to do my best to get people to play and enjoy it.
But I really need your help with this.
If you are on Twitter, play it and challenge others.
Regardless, please tell everyone you know who uses Twitter, ask them to play it and tell their friends.
If there is something you feel can be improved tell me and I’ll most likely do it.
Share your ideas for improving it, join in. Playing Twumps is fun and you can be a part of something that will ultimately make beautiful things happen in the world.