Snowflakes is a memory game where you track down two identical snowflakes.

Snowflakes are made from paper or cardpaper. What shape? There is a snowflake image on one side, from among 12 different snowflake images. I would store them in a white envelope, ideally with "Snowflakes" written in a classy script.

Group A consists of 12 of these snowflake pieces, each with a different snowflake image. Group B consists of twins of the pieces in Group A. Turn over the pieces in both groups. Mix up the pieces in Group B. Choose one of the pieces and put it in Group A. Put away the remainder of Group B and mix up the pieces in Group A.

Group A is 13 snowflakes, face down. Place the pieces in Group A in the following arrangement.
 
 
 
 

The board is this snowflake arrangement of the pieces, which is maintained throughout the game, although there will be a couple of missing snowflakes.

You hold a snowflake, snowflake A, from the previous turn. During your turn you pick up one of the snowflakes from the board, snowflake B, and compare it to snowflake A. If they look identical you win the game. If not, you put snowflake A back on the board in any empty position and snowflake B becomes the new snowflake A.
 
 
 
 

The snowflake theme fits beautifully. There are small, delicate white pieces with snowflake images. They gently move around like a blizzard, and it is quiet. There is the snowflake arrangement. Mysterious identical snowflakes are said to exist. And yet ..

Getting snowflake images is harder than you think. You would think you could beg, borrow, steal or create snowflake images, but no. They come in different styles, and there are not enough of a given style, or they're just wrong.

You could switch themes to butterflies. You could make or obtain some attractive, colourful butterfly pictures and have them flit around the board.
If you do that you've lost that nicely-fitting snowflake theme. Now you're doing butterfly sex.
 
 
 
 
 
 

Pip Pop is a board game using dice where you capture your opponent's dice and move your dice to the opponent's start line.

There are two players. One player has six red dice while the other has six white dice. Six dice have numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6 on the top. Dice are not tumbled; the number on top stays on top.

The board is a 6 x 6 grid. Your six dice are placed randomly on your start line, while your opponent's six dice are placed randomly on his start line.

During your turn you move one die one space orthogonally (left, right, up, down) on the board.

If you move one of your dice on a space occupied by your opponent's die, you may capture it. You can capture it if
The two dice have the same parity (odd or even) and your die's number is inferior to your opponent's.
The two dice do not have the same parity and your die's number is superior to your opponent's.
The two dice have the same number.

1, 2, 4, 6    >    1    >    1, 3, 5
2, 3, 5        >    2    >    1, 2, 4, 6
1, 3, 4, 6    >    3    >    2, 3, 5
2, 4, 6        >    4    >    1, 3, 4, 5
1, 3, 5, 6    >    5    >    2, 4, 5
2, 4, 6        >    6    >    1, 3, 5, 6

Once you have six on your opponent's start line you win the game. For example you could move your 4 die (the one with 4 on top) as well as your 2 die to the opponent's start line. Or you could just move your 6 die to the opponent's start line.

How good is this game?
This is not going to win Spieles des Jahres. The good thing is it's easy to throw together yourself.
 
 
 
 
 
 

Beach Buttons is a game where two players take turns moving their runners on a board with shrinking options, until the last player who can move wins.

The board is a 7 x 7 grid. At the start there are 49 pieces on the board. Each player has two runners. For the first turns players remove a piece from the board and put a runner in that position. For the rest of the game players take turn moving one of their runners. Runners move by leaping two spaces orthogonally (left, right, up, down) and must land on a space that contains a piece, which is then removed. The board is borderless, so if you go past the left side of the board you will wind up on the right side. The last player to move wins.

This is a blockade game without the bugs of other blockade game concepts.

There is a bunch of different ways to make this. I'm partial to using blue and yellow pieces as the runners. As a program this would make the borderless idea easy to grasp, but you would lose the pretty, clunky, tactile handmade game.