I had an idea, but perhaps this makes it into too much of a different game: Each player has their own cloud that either is getting constantly pushed back towards themselves, so it is up to their skill/understanding of the physics to keep their cloud over the opponent, or the cloud resets after each push to a random location, also requiring the player to master the physics. Also beyond the scope of the jam, but thought I should share anyway. :)
Viewing post in Drizzle Dash! jam comments
You know, this was my "ultimate" concept (that you can see in one of my sketches in the dev log). It's a 3-4 player game in more of an isometric view. Players have a cursor can move around the edge of the circle to blow their gust of wind inside the the play area--Imagine a similar style of game to Hungry Hungry Hippos, with clouds bouncing around in the middle. Each player has their own fire, but if it were a 4 player game there would only be 3 clouds. Players can technically blow any cloud so it's a fluid tug of war over defence and attack.
I had thoughts about a limited power up: being able to teleport to the opposite side of the circle (with a cool down after use). This could serve as immediate defence or attack. If you used your teleport ability whilst touching another players cursor on the outside of the circle it teleports them over to the opposite side. This makes it a sabotage tool as well.
This was all waaaaay to deep for a game jam haha so it got pared down to what I ended up making! I'd still like to develop that concept when I'm not slogging myself out over game jams!
The idea of it starting in random spots each time would certainly solve an issue. The problem that comes to mind is there'd need to be two clouds per side. One that's over the fire and one that's in the new random position ready to sent off. Otherwise, As soon as the cloud stopped moving, it'd reappear in the new random spot and if you landed it over the fire that would stop you scoring points.
I had a thought about starting the game without modifying the current gameplay too much: A game of "get the power bar closest to the chosen random value to determine the player that goes first". Still not ideal but it'd be a skill-based solution instead of luck of the draw. *shrugs*