Project 1: Design a Board Game

Getting started...

On Monday 3rd October I was put  into a group of 6 other students and given my first official brief; to design a board game. As a group we seemed to bond fairly well and I think we all felt fairly at ease around each other. This made brainstorming ideas towards the board game simple and easy. Our first ideas were a little vague which was only to be expected as we didn't really know what we wanted to create. The main concept that kept floating around was that of a card game in which you battle with other players around a board for level ups and XP (similar to the Pokemon card game) which would eventually lead to a final battle between 2 players to see who's "creature" scored the best after the main game.

Thinking this was a fairly solid start to an idea we took a trip to Langleys in Norwich to do some field research and just have a look at the different games available. I personally felt a little overwhelmed. I don't play many board games anymore (sadly) and I didn't realise just how many variations there would be!

Because of the time frame in which we have to do this project a few of us started to feel that we had given ourselves an overly complicated game to create and felt that maybe we needed a re think. We decided upon a slightly more childish theme, a game aimed towards a kids playing with their family. We drafted up most of the main fundamentals of the board plus the game rules and felt confident we were onto something strong. As a group I felt we were all on the right tracks, everyone seemed enthusiastic and contributed well which is generally what you need when working in a group.

The 1st group crit...

Unfortunately, this changed slightly following out group crit on Tuesday 4th October. During the crit I pitched a general concept of our game which was fairly received. I felt a little under pressure as I had previously been allocated the "team leader" role so I knew it was down to me to pitch out ideas and the nerves did get to me a little. I knew I could have probably worded the concept better but I'm sure that wasn't the reason our game came under fire. We weren't given negative feedback per say, we were just forced to question our whole game which led to a few people in the group feeling incredibly unsure about our idea. Some felt we should scrap it and start again, others felt we just needed to make sure we work hard at it and make it work. I was one of these people.

The main factors we took away from the crit were that if we were to do a child's game we needed to "dumb down" our ideas and game play, introducing more child friendly attributes. Or we had to scrap the whole game and design something for adults. We were advised that an adults game would probably be easier as we are all adults in the group. The main theory with producing a child's board game is that we would need to put alot of research and thought into how and why kids play games. This meant incredibly heavy research which I think might have been what was putting some of the group off.

Revising our ideas...

Anyway, to try and cut this short. It is now Wednesday 5th October and I think we are settling down with a slightly more solid concept of our game. The main feeling was to keep the idea and MAKE it work! Which is great because we all like our concept before. It just needed more work. This leads me nicely into today. Today I have been researching the psychology of children and how they play games (research which I will show after this post as I am still filtering through a majority of it) and what sort of elements they need in games to ensure it is an enjoyable and fun experience. I was also looking into age ranges as that was one of the main problems we had. Was it for younger kids, family or adults? I found useful websites detailing different games and their age ranges and actually found out that many 7+ games were still fairly complex in terms of game play and style which made the whole group feel more comfortable. We just need to find the right balance of "dumbing down" and keeping core game play features to ensure this game will work.

I apologise for this long post but I had to sum up 3 very important and busy days worth of work. I think all I will do now is talk about the game itself and post research up at a later date. Okay, so, here it goes!
 

The board game...

This is a classically themed "Cowboys and Indians" board game. The aim of the game is for each player to travel around the board collecting pieces of their "village/set" to place onto a small personal "scoreboard" that each player has on the side. Score is basically kept visually by how many set pieces are on that board. For example if a player chooses to be an Indian character, their aim is to build their classic Indian village. This might contain pieces such as a tepee, totem pole or longhouse. The player would travel around the board at paces directed with a die looking for cards which may contain pieces of the set they need to collect for their village. The same goes for the Cowboy players, only their set pieces will vary.

Around the board will be different squares the player could potentially land on. These are currently either a "chance" or "enemy" square. A chance square requires the player to pick up a chance card. This card may contain something positive or negative (go forward/backwards X spaces, congratulations you win X set piece, Oh no you lose X set piece). An enemy square would leave the player frozen out from their next go, or perhaps forcing them to go back a few squares (enemies will be inspired by traditional animals or people themed around Cowboys and Indians).

There will also be a timer going, we are not 100% sure why yet, but there will be one. Just to keep it exciting and ensure the game doesn't drag on for kids to get bored. The winner is the person who has the most built onto their village board when the timer runs out OR who finished their entire village set first.

Conclusion...
I for one am definitely feeling alot better about the game now. We have sorted out alot of the issues and I feel we are moving in the right direction. Tomorrow we plan to test play a prototype of this concept and see if it works, oh lord I hope it works, and that way we will know whether or not to carry on working with it or do something new. I set up a Facebook communications group page where we could all post links and helpful resources for the rest to see. It is also going to be the key way to communicate whilst we might not at uni so we all knew what is happening and no one is left out. However, today was the first day we didn't need to come into uni and we had decided yesterday that we were to stay at home and do as much research as possible to find ways to MAKE our game work. Myself and a couple of others we very clear that we would use the Facebook group during the day to communicate  with each other but a couple of group members seemed absent the whole day which didn't really help as this is a really crucial time in the development of our game! This was always going to be one of the pitfalls of working in groups and I am sure it will be okay to work around! Oh well, I guess we will just have to see how tomorrow goes, hopefully it will all run smoothly(ish)...