With any wide game always bear in mind rules for keeping safe
(c) Kit Logan, 2001 – licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike2.5 License.
A more complex wide game for teens and older children. Big Foot is based on the idea and legend of the “Sasquatch” and an original game created for a user following a request for a Snow Game which could be played at a Snow Camp with the theme “What’s my temperature” – which might explain the inclusion of some rules.
——————
To help set the scene but it’s not necessary, youth/children wake up or arrive on the scene to find huge footprints made in the snow, mud or some sort of trail leading off into some woods, indicating something large and strange is nearby. On making this discovery they are given a mission briefing similar to the one below but feel free to make your own one up.
The camp is now in a state of emergency. The footprints have been identified as belonging to a ‘Big Foot’, a large hairy manlike creature. It has only ever been spotted a few times and your mission is to capture it. Beware. Big Foot is notoriously hard to find because it can take the form of any animal at will and when cornered it has the ability to paralyse others by freezing them.
In order to trap it you not only have to find Big Foot, you’ll need to have life-bands and enough energy to keep you warm enough from being frozen by its power. To do this you need these energy tokens. You will only survive from being frozen and overcoming it if you have enough energy tokens.
Distribute out small cards with various amounts of energy on them (1 to 5) and give everybody a life band (coloured cotton to go around the wrist or other methods).
Before they go out warn them that not only will a failure to capture Big Foot everytime result in loss of their life-band/s needing them to return to base for a new one. Big Foot will also steal all their energy and have their power increased by that amount.
What the youth don’t know is that one of the leaders with them at that moment is playing ‘Big Foot’. It would be useful for one or two leaders who are known to the youth to be mysteriously absent (and in the woods) so the youth immediately suspect them. In addition, Big Foot is given a high energy rating of 15 or so to start off with…. So the youth have to discover not only who Big Foot is, but to capture them they have to collectively work together to have enough energy tokens between them to win.
When the groups disperse into the woods the leader playing Big Foot sets the game in motion, waiting for an opportune moment to freeze the members of a small group.
Big Foot has one other trick up their sleeve…. on meeting another leader they can make the other leader become Big Foot (and hand over the power tokens) so that youth don’t always know who Big Foot is.
Effectively if approached/challenged Big Foot must announce truthfully if they are and then find out what the collective power rating of the hunters is… So if Big Foot has a 15 energy rating and a group of players challenges with a collective energy between them of 12. This is lower than 15 so the group all lose their life bands AND power cards. Big Foot keeps these and now has an energy rating of 27!
In the event of a tie where its equal power rating… Players lose their life bands forcing them to return to base and get new ones, but not their power rating cards.
