The next step of this project is to make another variant by introducing one of the elements below.
They are more characteristic of contemporary games.
You can also incorporate the element in the current modified version if it makes sense.

Social Deduction

Mostly descending from Mafia/Werewolf, originally a psychology experiment.
They involve an informed minority (werewolves) against an uninformed majority (the villagers).

Commercial iterations like One Night Ultimate Werewolf, the Resistance, or Blood on the Clocktower generally involve different roles and mechanics that allow for more informed decisions, rather than just the players ability to lie and persuade.

Reality TV show like Traitors or The mole, or Among Us involve “traitor mechanics”, like saboteur or double agent and therefore social deduction.

Cooperation

Fully cooperative games have been a rarity until the success of Pandemic.

NPR played the latest version of Pandemic with four real-life epidemiologists. — Pandemic

Typical challenges with co-op games:
– feels like a solitaire played together
– expert players can monopolize the game
– they can be complex due to some analog engine/algorithm “running” the game
– when are they too easy or too hard? What’s the emotional fallout of EVERYBODY losing?

Materials

Takako Saito spice chess — Fluxus artist Takako Saito created a series of art chess sets with unusual materials. In “spice chess” players tell the identical pieces apart by recognizing the smell of them.

Board games are made of objects whose visual and tactile qualities largely affect the experience of a game. Playing a game of GO with actual stones is not the same as playing it online with a friend.
Certain bits need to be three-dimensional to facilitate manipulation.

Eddo Stern’s Money making workshop is a sculptural boardgame that involves fabricating gold ingots and leaving a mess behind.

Síochán Leat Branda Brathwaite — Síochán Leat by Branda Romero. Rules are written in a mixture of equal parts English ink and Irish blood. The game features a burlap pillow simulating an earthen mound covered by 26 pieces of grass, each representing a county in Ireland the burlap was filled with mementos of her upbringing and her heritage, including photographs of her great grandfather, Paddy Donovan, and one of her mother’s rosaries. Too much?

Brenda Romero is better known for Train (2009) which involved broken glass and rules typed on a nazi-era typewriter. Watch her classic lecture at the bottom of the page.

Beyond haptics, Jenn Sandercock’s Edible Games. A cookbook for games that involve literal food. Example master taster

On the commercial sphere there is a renewed interest in unconventional component and dexterity games, traditionally only associated to younger people.

Playtime

These short games involve some of the elements above plus other mechanic you can choose as the element to incorporate.

Elements:
IP Adaptation
Asymmetry
Hidden information / memory

Elements:
Dice-as-resources, cards as board elements
Real-time actions
Cooperation

Elements:
Design
Dexterity

Elements
Social Deduction / bluffing
Roles / asymmetry

Element:
Non traditional component (Phone)
Social commentary