Beetle Drive is a traditional (brilliant) game where each player draws a simple beetle with the first one to complete the insect being the winner. (see links if you don’t know what I’m talking about)
The beetle consists of a body, a head, six legs, two eyes, a mouth and two feelers; thirteen parts
in total. Throwing a six with a dice is required to start by drawing the body. A five is then needed to add the head. The various other parts are then added by rolling a dice number that corresponds to their value. ie legs = 4; feelers = 3; mouth = 2; eyes = 1 Players will miss a turn when they don’t throw the correct number required to enable the part to be added.
The game started as a paper version, but physical moulded plastic examples were developed and still exist. (links) I had one as a child and really loved the brightly coloured parts. I also used to put them in the wrong slots to end up making mad insects with a leg growing out where an eye should be or a feeler replacing a leg etc.
I’m now proposing an update to the Beetle Drive with some additional features and rules:
Firstly we are going to be constructing a beetle with more legs - a type of centipede in fact, featuring twelve legs in total. The game proceeds as normal until leg number 7 needs to be added. To do this requires two dice to be thrown who’s combination adds up to seven
7 = 6+1 or 5+2, or 4+3
Each subsequent leg requires a similar dice combination:
8 = 4+4 or 5+3 or 6+2
9 = 5+4 or 6+3
10 = 6+4 or 5+5
11= 6+5 and finally the last two legs require two sixes to be thrown for each leg.
Because the combinations are harder to achieve, players have a chance to catch up with anyone who initially races ahead due to a run of lucky dice throwing.
The first person to add the last leg to their multicoloured beetle creation is the winner.
With the extra legs and twin dice, more complicated versions of the game may also be generated.