Board game box finished! :)

Finally finished the box today thus completing the psychical attributes to the game here's some pictures of the finished product :)

the board game box finished

Building the board game

Yesterday was the build day for our board game. First job was actually for the day before and that involved getting the print sorted out, we decided to use a matt adhesive vinyl to print on of which cost us £16 (£2 each from the group members) after seeing the result of the print we were all really pleased as it is perfect for our board, box and pieces. After finding a room we got down to work to cut each piece out really carefully and build the box our of mountain card in the progress, we also cut out what is the board game itself. I think we spent about 4-5 hours working on making the box and board and sticking the print down an we still haven't finished quite yet. In the meantime I am really proud of what our group has accomplished and I feel that it will a thought out board game.

Western theme

Whilst trying to think of different themes that we could use for our board game I came up with the idea of a western styled theme. I came up with an idea for the piece symbols the other day so that a;

4 - Sheriff

3 - Cowboy

2 - Barmen

1 - Miner

For each one I created a simple symbol for and tried to come up with a concept piece for the background image for the board. 

Board concept background

Concept piece symbols

 I really like the idea of a Western styled theme game board as an add on to the collection, I feel the theme would work quite well in terms of design.

Play testing and themes

Yesterday during our lecture we got into our groups and had 2 other people from another group join us to play test our game. We set up our game and explained the rules to the other members and gathered into teams. We had 1 person from our group on one team and the person from the other group also on that team to make it fair. For the most part I feel that they grasped the rules quite well and enjoyed the game, we didn't find many problems with the rules or the game other than they said it was quite slow to start off with and slow to end. One thing I feel that we do need to definitely do is make sure the rotation of which piece can take which is on each corner of the board where the players start, this will help the player to determine what they can do with the pieces and in what order they can do it. Ultimately now though we need to actually start building the board itself. One of our group members is building the board itself and another is building the pieces.

For the pieces we are making them out of filmo (I think that's the name of the product), so yesterday we decided to venture off to a shop near uni to buy some tools to help create the pieces, because we only had one tool to build the pieces yesterday I didn't feel that I could have been of much assistance. Today I will look for a paper cutter to help create the pieces.

For the board our group member; Josh will be creating the board out of thin wood to the measurements from the example board he took home.

Overall I am happy with where our group is at and I hope that our members are happy with the progress of our board, for now we just need to finalise and agree on the aesthetics of the board.

An idea|concept piece

  Concept piece for box art, just an idea

                                            

The visual aesthetics of board games

When looking at some of the visual aesthetics of board games it soon becomes apparent that the box cover art itself usually tells a story and puts a meaning behind the game, I feel that this should be incorporated into our game once we decided on a name. However not all board games use art to relate to actual game played, they may just use this narrative artwork to pull the audience in.

For instance this image shows a board game using aesthetics in a highly detailed way to draw the viewer in, yet the game is only chess;

The high detail in the artwork really helps to convey a victory or a loss but also a story.

Another box art cover that helps convey a story and a battle is Risk;

The point that we need to think about is how high in detail do we want our game to be, do we want the artwork to convey a story, a battle or emotions that relate to the game. I feel that so far we have made a fairly simple game with its own complications, the main objective of the game is to capture the tower, however we haven't finished play testing yet so we don't know for sure if it will work, for 2 players we have play tested merely taking out each others opponents and for the most part it worked, however for the art work to actually be suitable I feel that through play testing a lot more will help our entire group get a clear vision on the type of style, colours and artwork that will suit out game.



Image (Battle Chess); http://www.stanford.edu/group/htgg/cgi-bin/drupal/?q=node/969
Image (Risk); http://gfbrobot.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/risk-funagain-com.jpg

Gathering images

When joining up with my group tomorrow I feel that one thing we should do is not only research games through internet, books etc but actually look in more stores that do different types of genres, so although we went to Toys R us it only showed us what could be achieved when marketing towards an audience of the younger generation and family, I feel that we could go to a few other stores and looks at some more, document them and even purchase a few to play and gather ideas from

Research

When researching into board games I wanted to look at what are some of the best-selling games and I have found that the best and quite common board games are ones such as Monopoly, Cluedo, Scrabble, chess, Trivial Pursuit and Checkers. The basic board games are ones like Scrabble, Chess and Checkers, although chess is a simple game in the way it looks it takes a lot more than just looking at it to play it thus making it an effectively enjoyable game. Games like Scrabble are more or less aimed at an age range of 13 upwards respectively but they make different editions that are more suited for the younger generation. Probably the most successful game and I'm sure some will favour it at Christmas is Monopoly, a quote from a website called 'the-top-tens' says "I think this game is the best of the best. Suitable for any family to have fun during free time. Suitable for any ages. Once you play it, you will want to play it over and over again!” One of the main key points I feel that our group needs to look at it is the fundamental basics of what makes a simple game, fun.. Through all of us researching it will help us gain a better insight into what works and maybe what doesn't work when it comes to board games [1]

Another key point that our group will need to look at is will the gameplay be based upon 'chance', 'Strategy' or 'luck'. Some games may use all of them important plays but some will maybe only use a couple or even one.

[2] After reading the project brief I found myself stumbling upon reference material on another student who also done this course and he made an interesting point of stating that most board games relate to situations in real life, I feel that this would most useful for when our group produces ideas for a board game, as students we can try and think of related situations in our lives; whether they be bad or good.

[1]http://www.the-top-tens.com/lists/top-ten-board-games.asp
[2](Asterie, B.P. and Eugene, F. P. (1990) Favourite Board Games, Courier Dover

Publication)

Board-game project

Today was the start of our new project with a simple title of 'Board game'. Essentially this project will introduce us to the core mechanics of games and poses such questions as 'what is a game?' or 'how do we define a game?' and 'what is gameplay?'.

We first got into groups of 9 and assigned each person a role, I ended up with the role of the leader and so decided to try and get every one connected with each other either through email or mobile numbers. After writing down our contact details we then decided who wanted to do what with their roles such as 'researchers', 'concept designers' and 'modelers', this just helped us get a clear sight in what every one was doing and what we needed to do. However before diving right into the project at hand we felt the most important thing to do was for all of us to go away this night and research into board games and which ones are successful, the art work involved in creating a board game and generally the history of boards games.
  
A few us decided to take a trip down to Toys R us and take a look at some of the existing board games and to a get a real feel for what is out there and what kind of audiences they are made for, whilst doing we also took pictures of some of the existing ones to keep a record of what and where we were going. Through take a trip down memory lane that is Toys R us we discovered that most of the board games are not necessarily advertised towards the older generation but more for the younger age or a much broad age for the family, we also noticed that the colours used for the boxes and the boxes themselves are very bright, thus attracting the eye of the viewer and wanting to see what it is about. 

We had a brief talk on that we didn't want the colours to be bright but we didn't want the colours to be dull so something in between would be perfect, we also had a little talk on the audience we want to target and more or less the family type based board games where any age is applied. When also looking at some of the board games we noticed that not all 'board games' involved a board but relied on other objects and toys to make the game fun. We left Toys R us to part our own ways off and most went home to research. Tomorrow we shall discuss what we have researched and generally discuss ideas for where we want this project to go.


I feel we have a good team and hopefully will be able to produce something that is a great board game.