Board game project.

Sam’s blog, project one, board game.

Week one

We started by playing a range of different board games to get an idea of some of the games that are out there already. We made notes about the rules and appearance of the game itself, commenting on the easiness and simplicity. We found that with some of the games there were so many different rules and it was longwinded and complicated to even set up the game, so we learned that long and complicated rule books would annoy players, we lost interest and gave up pretty quickly.

Other games were simple to understand and follow, but had other faults like not having a capacity for more than four players, or the pieces wouldn’t stay in the places they were meant to, because the recesses weren’t deep enough. We found that a simple games that involved a group of people maybe 5-7 players was more entertaining and a social game.  

I was set the task of researching the history of board games. I thought looking for some of the first games ever discovered would be a good place to start, as I thought they would probably be quit primitive and be quite simple. I wanted to see how as time moved on the games developed and grew more sophisticated. I also found out that chess and checkers has not really changed since the Egyptians invented them, some new rules might have been added here and there but the game its self has remained the same.

Research 1: history of board games.

Mancala is an ancient board game. It is commonly found in various different ancient cultures around the world. It is believed it was originally started in Africa or an Arabic country. The oldest example found was dated back to 7’000- 5’000 BC.

The game usually takes the form of a limestone slab with rows of circular indentations it, possibly for holding some kind of counters.

Nabataean version usually 4x12

It is believed that the roots of games can be traced to Egyptian times and you use counters to play, it is also believed that the aim was to capture the other players counter. The rules and system of the game have been influenced by different cultures over time and many versions were created and turned into completely new games but all with the same origins.

In some versions of the game it was found to have really large and deep cups instead of small indentations, this could have been to hold a large amount of counters.

 

It seems that the size and number of circles in on the board dictated the number of players. The games themselves appear to be simple and could be played by any one; it could be that they were a social event.

This game is thought to be the first board game ever created.

Senet  

Senet was an Egyptian game and was very popular to both commoners and nobility.

The board had 30 squares and the player had to move across the board in an S shape.

 

The player would through dice or numbered sticks and then try and race round the board to get to the end. If the player landed on the same square as another persons piece they could knock that players piece of the board. This reminds me of checkers or even early chess, that in later years the Egyptians would create. All of these games involves capturing spaces on the boards in order to win. This game was usually played with two players, but later on it would become a more spiritual game and would be played by one person against what they believed was a spirit from the after life.

Quirkat

This game is basically the origins of checkers, unlike checkers the player is not forced to take your opponents peace, the rule that forces you to move was added by the French in the 15 hundreds. This game to originated from Egypt, I have found that most board games can trace back to Egypt in some way. The game was renamed by the French to Jeu Force, but is known in England today as Draughts or checkers. The game has not changed much at all in its existence, and is a simple game that also has some strategy to it.

 Original Draughts board.

Between all of the early board games there seems to be a common factor. Its seems that they are all counter based and use a grid of sorts to move around on the common aim to remove the opponents pieces from the game in order to win.

Chess is the oldest surviving game and was played by the Egyptians, this game has hardly changed at all for thousands of years.

Other board games used dice to determine movement, meaning there was both luck and skill were involved. 

We then started thinking about general things that would be essential when creating our board game. We listed off things that we would need to think about when making a board game. This was the list:

·      Think about the materials you are using to make the game.

·      Don’t do something typical that has been done to death.

·      Keep it simple, don’t include to many aspects to the game. Leave it open for a range of different age groups. And to avoid problems.

·      Race to end, battle to win.

·      About four players, keep it social.

·      No restriction on style.

·      Simple rules don’t confuse players.

·      Handy cap your opponent, this makes the game more competitive 

Towards the end of the week we were throwing round ideas for our board game, at this stage it was very vague but we managed to come up with a good stable base idea. The main objective of the game was to reach a certain point or base by building a path with tiles. We nicknamed it project pathfinder; we decided to have a spinner or cards that you picked up to determine how many spaces you could move. Then it was gradually built up as the day went on, the objective of the game was to get to the centre of the board using the shaped tiles, collect some sort of treasure then to make it back to your base first, the first person to reach the end wins.

Week 2

In week two we started off again with the base idea we had created and gradually worked into it, refining the idea and adding more aspects to it. We finally came up with what we thought to be a pretty stable idea, but as it grew it got more and more complex. At one stage we had 9 different aspects to the game, we were unnecessarily complicating our original simple idea. If we wanted to keep the game open for a wider range of players we had to keep it fairly simple, but at the same time challenging and competitive enough to keep people interested. After pulling back and revising our game, we simplified it bringing it down to about 3 or 4 different aspects, but still managed to keep the board the same. So we made a paper mock up of the board and tiles, and making a spinner from an old pencil and card. I came up with some designs for the look of the tiles, I decided to look at circuit boards and use some of the patterns that you find on them and incorporate them into the look of the tile pieces, also the binary was used in the designs as well. As we started playing we instantly found problems with it, one was that it was that trying to get to the other side of the board while others were doing the same and blocking of other players, it got jammed in the middle making it impossible for some people to win, this was a problem as no matter what all players needed an equal chance of winning.

By the end of the week we had a working board with tiles ready for beta testing the next week. We had already got people to play the game outside of university and had worked out most of the bugs, and the game ran relatively smoothly.

Week 3

Week three began with a presentation of our game concept to the rest of our group, then we got people to play test our game while we likewise play tested others. I found that there was a wide range of different ideas each one completely different to the one before it. The over all reaction to our game was positive and it worked really well, however after re playing it ourselves with a few members of other groups, we came across a problem, there were too many large pieces, every one used the larger pieces instead of the smaller ones making it too easy to block off other players, so we reduced the number of large pieces and made up the numbers with smaller pieces. We also decided that we were going to change the aesthetics of our board to make everything a little clearer and brighter and backing the tiles on coloured card to make the tiles more distinguishable from each other, sorting the pieces into colours proved tedious when all the backs were plain white. I was given the job of mounting them all on the card and cutting them out again, quite a tedious job but it was worth it to see the final outcome.

We re- made the board surface with our revised design, and made a box and cover. He final name decided for our game was Corruption as the aim of the game is to corrupt the opposite CPU with your virus. 

After ironing out some final creases the final board was complete, we were all happy with the over all outcome.