A new trimester has begun, and so has Creative Writing. For our first assignment we were tasked with creating our own game from a mystery box of tools. The goal for our Creative Writing class is to express our own creativity, and having to create a brand new game that has never been played before was a challenge. But after putting a lot of thought into the assignment I finally game up with a game: Gooseball.
Ages: 8+
Players: 1-2
Time of Game: 8-18 minutes
Contents:
- Two tennis rackets
- One wiffle ball
- Duct tape
- Spool of string
- A stack of cups
Setup: Inflate seven balloons with helium and tie a two foot long piece of string to each balloon. Next take the duct tape and tape the strings that are attached to the balloons around the rim of the seven cups. The cups should hover in the air and be around eye level. If the cups rise any higher than eye level feel free to drop a few pennies in the cups to weigh them down (pennies not included). Each player gets one racket and there is only one ball.
Game play: Gooseball is played in a four walled room with high ceilings. It can be played with one or two players, you can play as a team or competitively. The objective of this game is to use the tennis racket to hit the wiffle ball into the cups that are held in the air by the balloons. The ball can either be hit against the walls of the court or bounced on your racket. Gooseball is fairly simple, to win you must hit a ball into every single cup using the rackets. The only twist is that you can’t touch the ball with your hands, you can only use the racket. When playing as an individual or on a team of two you have 8 minutes to try and places the wiffle ball into the seven cups.
When you play against one other person you only have 6 minutes to fill each cup with the ball. The player who knocks down the most cups wins that round. You must play three rounds to determine the winner. Because there is only one wiffle ball each player must take their turn to hit the ball. One players turn consist of five hits, but the ball must be in constant action. Meaning that once a player starts his/her turn they’re not allowed to touch the ball with any part of their body. When player ones turn is over player two will grab the ball and start their turn from their original starting point. Any points scored outside the six minute time period will not count.
Penalties: When two people are playing against each other and a penalty occurs the consequence is that the opposing player gets an extra four hits added to their turn. Penalties include touching the ball with any body part while the wiffle ball is in play, a player taking more than five hits during their allotted turn is also counted as a penalty for unfair play. Any other misconduct of the equipment will result in a penalty.
First off I liked how specific the instructions on how to set it up was. I totally got what you were saying, and could visualize really well. Although Your introduction was also good but you didn’t say anything about the mystery box in your task. Also some of the rules were a little too picky. Like the high ceiling and four walled room. So maybe you could explain why their important, or leave them out altogether. 🙂