The idea is to have a co-operative game where the players all either win together or all lose, but they can't communicate with each other, except through the board.

So, on their turn a player will choose some tile from their hand and lay it down on the grid somewhere in a way that would seem, to them, to make the most sense and be the most valuable.

That may, though, screw over another player's actions.

I'm thinking that the theme be something like spies trying to sabotage something, or infiltrate something, in a Loose Lips Sink Ships scenario. Any player who leaks information, even by just going "Rrr, damn" when someone puts something down, costs the team points due to a raid.

So, the game should roughly end up like carcassone poker, where everyone wants to play together but can't co-ordinate.

There would perhaps also be "intention" tiles which can be played instead of normal tiles. They cost you a turn, but they might have a little red X or an arrow or something on them to signify "Please don't put things here" or something. That has to go on the board, though, and costs a turn.

Then, later, tiles can replace those ones.

If you wanted to get crazy, you could even have a mechanic where the board is setup with a spinning shade around it, and players don't see the board until it's their turn. Then they don't even know who did what, they just know how the board was when they last touched it, and how it is now.

Flavour

Maybe it's something like a machine or factory where some parts take inputs and produce outputs. We're all trying to take resource A and get to resource B, but I don't know that other people have better cards than me, I just have to go forward assuming I'm the best, or something. Dunno.