As I do this "idea a day" challenge I'm working out the parameters of the challenge for myself. For example: can I use an idea I didn't explicitly think of *today*? Can I use an idea that's a development of an existing game or does it have to be a completely new idea?

And the answer of course is "whatever I want and is useful or fun". So today's idea is a brand new thing, EMUCOW, a roll & write boardgame about building hybrid creatures and placing them into your island. You generate animals by rolling 4 dice. Two are used to generate a random animal, and the sum of the other two are used to choose where to put the animal. You get points for each animal at the end of the game.

There are 4 sets of 6 animals you use to make up the hybrids. When you use an animal you cross it off:

FIELD: DOE COW YAK EWE GNU ELK

FOREST: CAT DOG RAT FOX PIG APE

RIVER: COD GAR EEL KOI BOA ANT

CAVE: OWL BAT EMU HEN BEE BUG

and you have 10 rounds in the game to place animals in a Settlers of Catan style island map, each hex having a number between 2 and 12. Each hybrid animal gets attributes from each category that they are in, and the habitats on the map give points for placing animals with certain attributes in them, and animals want other types of animals adjacent to them for maximum points.