When I brainstormed the design of my board game last weekend, I wanted to make a game that reflected my creativity. While I have never designed a board game in recent years, I have made a few simple computer games.
 |
| The rules of 21 with Emily, as narrated by Emily. |
The last computer game that I made was called 21 with Emily, and I used some of its concepts to make my current board game. The game itself is simple; one human player and one computer player, Emily, take turns counting in increments of one, two, or three. The count starts at zero, and whoever reaches 21 loses. While I did take some time to program the actual game mechanics and to program Emily’s behaviour, the main showcase of the game was Emily’s presentation to the player. Emily gives the player the game’s rules in a snide tone, and her expressions change while the game is being played, with Emily gloating whenever she wins.
 |
| Emily wins by forcing the player to count to 21. |
As I began to create assets for my board game, I looked back
on the previous computer games that I had made, and I realized something about
my creative process. I realized that I
focus less on the core mechanics of games and more on their aesthetics. More specifically, I think about the tone of
the game and how it interacts with the player, and only worry about how the
actual game works later. While my drawings are extremely simplistic (mostly because I rarely draw), I do feel that they get across the intended light-heartedness of my games.
 |
| My board game is being prepared in class. |
One genre of video game that I enjoy is the role-playing
game. While role-playing video games
take place in a variety of settings, many of them take place in medieval fantasy. For this project, I wanted to make a
light-hearted parody of these types of games.
I decided to make three player characters for my game: Daniel the
Warrior, a parody of the boisterous fighter archetype; Alfred the Wizard, a
parody of aloof magic users; and Lisa the Priestess, a parody of the nurturing and
supportive healers.
 |
| Alfred the Wizard is one of three playable characters. |
Each player plays as one of these characters. The premise is that these characters are
wandering in a maze-like dungeon, trying to find treasure, a common setup in
role-playing games. Each player rolls a
die and moves throughout the maze. Some
spaces contain treasure. Each player
tries to collect as much treasure as he or she can. The game ends once all of the treasure is
collected, and the player with the most treasure wins.
 |
| Event cards can affect a specific character. |
The mechanic that I wanted to showcase here were the event cards. Each time a player collected a treasure, that player drew an event card. Event cards could affect the player’s characters in different ways. I wrote the event cards to be tongue-in-cheek insights on each of the characters. For example, one event card caused a protein shake shortage, which lowered Daniel the Warrior’s morale and caused him to lose a turn, contrasting a warrior’s stereotypical physical abilities with a deliberately out-of-place modern product.
 |
| My original game board took too long to navigate. |
When I play tested my game later on, I realized that most of players’ time was spent taking turns rolling the die without much happening. I responded by removing some unnecessarily long paths and adding more entrances and exits to the various areas. Even after I submitted my assignment, I realized that my game was still going too slowly, so I reduced the size of the rooms and placed the starting spaces closer to the rooms. If I were to work more on my game, I would definitely add more event cards and make those cards more varied in their effects. With that said, I do look forward to my video game assignment and will use what I have learned from this assignment there.
