Category: Game Design Studio 1

5 game ideas around the theme of building

1. Trailer park – the board game is a “map” of wealthy neighborhoods. It is your job to ruin the neighborhoods by building up a trailer park. Person with the most trailer parks at the end wins.
2. Junk yard art. Play until the junk yard runs out of junk. Every player is dealt a card stating what they have to make. There are cards that make you miss your turn when you “have to go to work that day”. Person who has the closest looking junk art to their image card, wins.
3. Western game. Back in the old western time when no one knew anything outside of their own town. Each player on their turn gets to pick to either expand the board, build a new town, trade, or use a good to better their score. Score is tallied by who has the most towns and the most / best goods. A player could automatically loose if they ‘get shot’ for trying to steal or cheat their way into getting a better good, or even if they step foot into a bad town.
4. Make-up artist. Have to give the dummy a make-over while blind folded.
5. Steel city. Beginning of the Pittsburgh era and everyone has to work together helping build up the city, but this time trying not to pollute the air.

5 Theme Ideas

1. Time Machine – go back to the land of the dinosaurs and have to try and save different species of dinosaurs. They cannot ride in the time machine, but you can ride the time machine back to the future to get supplies when needed. Work individually or as one big team to save as many as you can. You can only save one species at a time. To qualify as saving the dinosaur it must make it past the big bang. Once one species is saved, you can start your strategy over to save another species.
2. Tip the ice berg. Play as penguins and the goal is to be the one who tips the ice berg. The board plays against you, and doesn’t want to tip. Whose ever penguin eats a ____ number of fish first, tips the ice berg and wins.
3. Football checkers – line starts in the middle of the game board. Take turns moving your players trying to block and protect your end zones. First “team” to 5 touchdowns wins.
4. A ship of goods for trading is sinking, you must throw things over board to stay afloat. But the ship is taking on water and a storm is brewing. You must save cargo, or throw things over board. You are in control of your own hand of cards and must help save the ship with everyone else. You are pretty far from the coast and it will take the rescue team some time to get to your ship. If you and your crew can save more than $____ worth of goods, you win. The more expensive goods are the heavier they are. The cheaper, the lighter.
5. College themed game. Must pass college with the disadvantages of cheating on tests, forgetting homework, but bonus points for going to a party the night before a test and passing the test. The board is against you and you must over-come it and pass. First one to graduation wins.

Tokaido probably had the most definitive phases out of any of the games thus far. I’m not sure if it’s because I’ve become more apt to noticing the phases, or if it was the game itself, but I could definitely tell when I had a definitive gameplan, and when I felt like our team was going to win. The game itself was really unique, and I found the theme to fit really well. I enjoyed trying to deduce the objectives of the other players, and think of how they interact with my objectives.

Pandemic could have been more fun if we hadn’t encountered an outbreak on both the first and second turn of the game. If I remember correctly, 3 cities started at level 3 infection, and the outbreaks both occurred in one of these cities. I looked up how many cities there were after the game and found it to be 48. Given a deck of 48 cities, there was a 3/48 * 2/47 = 0.27% chance of that happening. Frustration aside, I was able to enjoy the game for a short time. The theme and mechanics were both fairly unique, and I felt as if I was useful to the team until we inevitably lost. Dealing with 2 outbreaks in the first 2 turns is hard.

8 Minute Empire was difficult, but only because of the rules. The English translation didn’t quite specify where the starting region was, so we had to infer it as the center region (the other playgroup inferred it as the 4 corners and each player began in a separate one – I don’t know which one was correct). I also had trouble determining whether having n of a card counted for x points per card or x points total, and I never figured out why there were resource tokens (which we never took out of the box). Once I had a general idea of how the game worked, I became engaged and concerned with other player’s expansion, but I was so concerned with how to play the game that the theme didn’t even cross my mind.

Theme Ideas

1. Spoiler Alert – Card Game
   Spoil movie plots and twists with your friends. Cards include movies, Spoilers, and actions. Each player receives a movie card, 2 spoilers, and 3 actions. Use deduction and luck to guess the movie each player has. Play spoiler cards to eliminate other players. Use action cards to steal, look, or remove other players cards.
2. Neon Highway – Board Game
   Travel the space highways of Metis, a galactic metropolis full of wonder. Played in the dark, this glowing neon board, glow in the dark dice, and cards help players maneuver through this distant city. Although the city is full of excitement, the natives do not like outsiders. Travel through the city and avoiding giving away your cover. Collect riches and souvenirs along the way.
3. Mirror City – Board Game
   A board that can be used on either side. Choose daylight and you play cops and robbers across the board. Choose night time to play detective and suspected serial killer. Follow the board throughout the city and choose to catch the killer or escape being caught.
4. Dynasty – Board Game
   It is now your land and your colony. Choose your animal, skill, class, and mineral to build your ranks and take over more land. Pick up cards along the way and play ones that benefit your colony. Who will be the next dynasty?
5. Crowded City
   Played similarly to Battleship and Guess Who? Two players sit opposite of each other with a towering building/city in-between. Place your characters throughout the city out of your opponents view. Guess the area and the correct character and the last one left in the crowded city wins.

Game Reviews

In Takenoko, players must grow bamboo in the emperors garden and feed the giant panda. Each player must tend to the garden, feed the panda, and add plots in order to complete objective cards and gain points. The game ends when a player reaches a set number of goals. Overall I thought the theme of the game was cute and lighthearted, but the mechanics seemed slightly random at times. I personally had a hard time learning all the rules and understanding the use of all the pieces. If given more time to look at the rules I would say it’s a good gateway game. The theme is original but not too complex, and the players have luck, interactivity, some ease of learning, and a replay value.

For Eight-Minute Empire we did not have the English rules so we looked up and used what we could find on the game. I do not believe we played it correctly but it was still an interesting idea. The game is obviously supposed to be face paced and uses an exploring-like theme in which players move their armies across a map to take over as much land as they can. Players must use their tokens to buy cards to use actions in the game. When eight cards have been played the game is over. I believe it could be a good gateway game in aspects of its simple theme, ease of learning (with the correct rules), interactivity, luck and replay value being quite high.

Pandemic is a co-operative strategy board game with the theme of violent disease outbreaks all over the world. Each player has a role and special strengths to help fight the outbreaks. through the different decks, actions, and cities players must fight the outbreak and stop the spread of infections. The only reason I could see Pandemic not being a gateway game would be because of the complexity and slight learning curve.

Out of the three games we played, I found Love Letter to be the most entertaining overall. I enjoyed the story behind it, and the game was fun and easy to learn. I felt very similarly about Hanabi in terms of story and enjoyment. Despite its simplicity, I found the rules of the game quite unique. While playing each of these games, I found myself appreciating the story especially, even thinking to myself how much less fun these games might be without one. With Love Letter and Hanabi, it’s a very smooth transition from the backstory provided by the game’s setting, and the story created by the players. The story created by the players even fits in logically with the backstory, which helps immerse the player. It’s interesting, then, that I enjoyed Flux as much as I did. The game epitomizes mechanics, and there is practically no backstory or theme – though, I suppose its lack of these attributes is the theme in and of itself.

You mentioned in class that the non-munchkin version of Gloom was much more depressing and grim. Given the level of depression that this version had, I don’t think I want to see just how depressing the original is. Nonetheless, I found the game fun and I enjoyed the way that the characters progressed, both mechanically and thematically, like how the cards we stacked on characters had sentences for names ([character] [card], [holly] [was betrayed by the dice]). One thing that I didn’t entirely like about the game was how abruptly it could end. In one instance, it felt like we were just getting into phase 2 of the game when one of the automatically played cards ended the game immediately. That card seemed like more of a snowball card than a headwind card.

I really enjoyed Dominion for the brief time I played it, and I was really disappointed that it ended early. It was really fun trying to remember what people’s decks consisted of (including my own), seeing what kind of strategies people were going for, and how everyone adapted to each other. For example, Desmond went for Militia’s early on and the other players started to grab Moats in response. I grabbed a lot of Villages to start, and when the pile was getting low, the other players tried to buy some Villages before they were gone. The theme wasn’t really ingrained in the gameplay, but just mechanically the game was a lot of fun.

1. [Courier] 3 players. A standard game of chess, except checkmate results in victory for both standard players. The idea is that these two kingdoms have important information for the opposing king that would surely prevent a looming war. There is a third player, an assassin, who controls a single queen. Their objective is to mate either king before another player does, preventing them from receiving the information and ensuring war. The queen has a set number of lives, and respawns after a set number of turns.

2. [Rubix Board] 2 players. Standard Chess or Checkers, but played on checkerboard Rubix Cubes. Given the constraints of developing a checkerboard pattern on a cube, only one face of the cube would be “playable” at any given time. Each player gets one move of the cube and one move of a piece per turn.

3. [Spiral] 2 players. Player 1 controls 4 pawns, positioned on the edge of the board. By rolling dice, they move their pawns around the board and in a spiral pattern towards the center. Player 2 controls a set of Bishops that attempt to destroy the pawns before reaching the center. Pawns may destroy bishops, Pawns win when 1 pawn reaches a set distance into the board.

4. [BattleChess] 2 players. The same as Chess, however each player is able to call in an aerial strike on any square on the board. The strike takes 3 turns to arrive, and renders the affected square unplayable for the rest of the game. It can not be moved through or landed on. Only one strike per player may be in progress at a time, and both players are aware of which squares are being hit.

5. [Oops All Kings! / Game of Thrones] 2,4,6,8 players. Using normal chess rules, each player controls 1 king placed equidistant from each other near the center of the board. Last man standing wins.

Bonus Game: [EA Chess] 2 players. The classic game of chess is “improved” with microtransactions, allowing players to purchase additional pieces during gameplay.

Review:

Last week, out of the two games, Pandemic was my favorite. I like how involved it was and how it was easy to connect with it emotionally. I feel like the game made it seem like you were in a real life situation, and you felt responsible any time there was an outbreak or a city was destroyed. I also like how everyone had to work together in order to succeed, which meant there had to be a lot of communication. As for the panda game, I liked how this game had a strategic value but for me it wasn’t as easy to connect to. It was very confusing at first and took a few rounds to get the hang of. This game was odd because everyone kind of had to work together, but at the same time you were competing against one another.

Game Themes:

1. Crime—this would be a board game where every player is a different character. There would be cards that lead you through the game that will either help or hurt you from finding the criminal. Whoever detects the criminal first wins. If no one detects the criminal and the criminal gets to his destination first, he wins.
2. Love Match—make love matches between different characters based upon likes and dislikes that are on the character card.
3. Money—test your strategy on making and saving money.
4. College Life—based upon personality, interests, and location, players will have to find the best college for their character and help them survive it.
5. Wizards—each player will have a character that is a different wizard with different capabilities. Players will race to the finish line using their powers against one another.

Game themes

1. Dinosaurs
   1. Explore evolution and mass extinction
2.   Possible bad days, things that go wrong, bad luck
3. Showers, bathing-routines, products,
4. Blanket forts
5. Snoring, sleeping positions, amount of blankets
6. Trash—recycling, landfills

Game design

Audrey Miller

The three board games played this week were Pandemic, Takenoko, and Impero. During the game Takenoko, we played in 4 groups of 2. This game took contribution of all players for one team to win. It was a very confusing game because each icon had a specific type of move to make and we had to keep referring to the instructions to remember. While playing Takenoko, it was obvious that the game was made around the story and the images on the game pieces were well planned and executed. The mechanics of the game seemed to be the final thing the game designers thought about. It was hard to follow at first, and every question we had, the answers were not in the instructions. The next game we played was Pandemic. This game seemed to have a lot of setting up, that was only needed for one person. After the game was set up, we just jumped into the game and didn’t read the directions because one player already knew the rules and just taught us as we went along. Pandemic was definitely and easier game to play but required everyone to contribute. Instead of one person or one team winning, everyone won. We didn’t play the whole game because we ran out of time when the other group was done playing Impero. But we finished the round with curing 2 dieses. The next game played was Impero. All the instructions were in Dutch or French or who knows what. There were a set of English instructions, but they seemed to be just google translated over because we felt as if it was missing more information. The directions told us to start somewhere that was not specified on the board, and the board had these little arrows on them that we couldn’t figure out what they meant. This game was over all insane. It was not a quick game to play. It took us about 20 minutes to play it. The other thing was we didn’t know how people won. We understood that if you take over a continent then you won that way, but the point system was not right. Then the six cards that sat on the top of the board that you could either pay for or get one for nothing, didn’t seem right to me. Because in my mind, of course people are only going to take the free cards because who wants to waist their coins when having more coins might mean something in the end. Just over all it wasn’t a good game and it needed some t.l.c.

Chess Board Game Ideas

1. A Piece of Cake
   Players start with an 8×8 square chess board. Roll a die and go to the square with the corresponding number or a multiple of that number. Each turn, a player must remove a square from the board itself. Choose your steps wisely.
2. Players start with a 2×2 square chess board. The game includes action cards, a die, tokens, and player pieces. If a card reveals an action such as roll the die. The player must roll and place their player piece on the board corresponding to the die roll. Board squares include instant death, resurrection, one token, or a shield to protect you for one round.
3. Sushi Master
   The game includes 4 4×12 square chess-like boards, 48 sushi pieces (flat round graphic discs), and a deck of cards. 2 to 4 players can play and start by choosing their preferred sushi roll. Each turn a player must pick up a card and complete the action. The first player to fill their sushi board wins. Players could use real sushi if desired.
4. Lactose or Intolerant
   Players start with a 6×6 square chess board, choose a dairy token, and pick up a card each turn. There are 3 decks. According to the square you go to, pick up a card for the deck labeled the same. You can only take 4 hits of dairy before you’re eliminated.
5. Musical Square
   Players work with an 8×8 square chess board and decks. Players land a square of the same numbered deck and must answer questions on the musical genre. The first player to collect 5 cards wins. Musical genre decks include rock/alt, pop, international, country, classical, rap, jazz, and metal.

Game Reviews

Dominion is a card game in which players must build their decks and use their current hands to their advantage. We started the game very skeptical of the many decks and purposes of cards. As we played we each slowly pick a strategy of cards we should buy or get rid of. The pacing of the game seemed well divided between the beginning, middle, and end of gameplay. We start slow in order to learn the rules and grow confident in the system by adding cards to our decks. The middle of the game seemed to be when we ran out of the first or second deck of cards. The end felt near when each player started scrambling for estate cards before the third deck ran out. No one really could tell who was the winner until each counted their estate cards.

Munchkin Gloom is a card game whose theme is a miserable story for each character. Players goals are actually to kill their own characters before the other players. This humorous game can be fairly competitive and fast-paced with each player only having 4 characters to kill. Each action card and retaliation card adds an interesting storyline or twist that makes the game a fun experience.

The two games we played in class this week were Gloom Munchkin and Dominion. Playing Gloom Munchkin didn’t exactly make me feel gloomy. But now I see why it is called gloom. Because you have to kill off your own characters and who ever kills off all their characters first basically wins, unless you do not have as many points as someone else. From what we learned, is that you should not kill off all your players so soon. If you keep adding up your points first, then killing them, you will have a better chance at winning than someone who kills all their characters first. Because if the first thing you do is kill them, you might not have that many points. So, it’s a game of strategy and skill. You must pay close attention to what everyone else is playing so you do not make any mistakes. Sometimes it’s just luck of the draw and you end up making a mistake because someone picked up a new card that ruined your plans. But in the end, everyone has a gloomy day because they just killed off their own characters for their own self benefit to win a game. We were able to play this game a couple times because our first round went too fast because we all played cards that ended the game sooner and we didn’t have that high of scores. In the game Dominion, you must dominate and own everything. This is a super long game we only got to play for what seemed to be like 30 minutes. As soon as we all started to pick up on the logistics of the game, class was over! I think we made it into phase 2 of the game by that point because we were out of one deck of cards, and we all were starting to buy points and more gold and the higher-ranking cards. I do want to know what it would be like at the end of this game because it is all about how you play the 5 cards you have in your hand and if you play them right you will have a good chance that turn.

1. In a pool- The floor is lined with a checker board and the players are the pieces. Normal checker rules apply. But when a person is ‘king’ the player gets another one of their players on their shoulders.
2. Use of Lego characters. The goal is to rescue the Puppy that is placed in the center of the board. The first one there has to carry the puppy back home (to the starting position). The other players can chase down the lego man with the puppy to steal it. First one who makes it back home safe with the puppy wins. Roll (1) dice to move character. 2-4 players.
3. Eels and escalators. Use pipe cleaners as the eels and popsicle sticks as the escalators. Land on eel, you must slide down to the tail. Land on an escalator, get to climb to the top. Goal is to make it from the bottom left of the board to the top right. Roll (1) dice to make moves. 2-4 players
4. 4 in a row. Everyone starts off the board. Everyone has different colored chips. The goal is to get 4 of your color in a row, right to left; up and down; or diagonal. First person to get 4 in a row wins. Everyone gets to place one chip per turn. Everyone except the first player on the first turn, has to place a chip in a square that is next to another chip. 2-4 players
5. The board is Velcro. Hang the board on a wall and set up the board like a normal chess or checkers game. To play, you must pick up the piece you want to move and you must stand back and throw the piece. Where ever it lands on the board, it must be played. Even if it landed on the wrong colored square. If the piece is thrown and doesn’t make it on the board, keep trying until the piece is played. After 3 tries the person must give up turn and place the piece back on the board in the original spot it was picked up from.

1. [Love Triangle] 3 to n players. Each player attempts to confess their love to the person to their left. The first person to confess wins. In order to confess, you must have a certain level of confidence, your love must have a certain level of trust, and you both must have a certain level of charisma. These stats can be altered by cards.
2. [Pawn] ~4 players. Players need to meet a certain gang quota, and do so by “robbing” the deck and each other. Some cards are item cards to be pawned at the end of each round, and some cards are action cards that interact with item cards. Not meeting the quota at the end of a round, or being caught by police, results in elimination. Item cards have certain characteristics that makes them easier/harder to hide or worth more/less. Winner is last person standing.
3. [Math] 2-6 players. Players attempt to simple solve math equations that they themselves create with a deck of standard playing cards. Each player plays 1 card per turn, in a line following previous cards. If the card can be considered the “solution” to the previous cards, the player wins all cards on the table. A solution means that the previous cards can add or subtract to equal that card, and the player chooses the operators and order of operation. Whoever wins the most cards at the end wins.
4. [Witness Protection] 3-6 players. Players work together to find and kill the witness card. An entire deck of action cards are dealt, then a smaller deck of characters are dealt. One character is the “witness,” and whoever is dealt the witness is secretly the “rat.” Each player keeps their hand in order. Action cards are used to deduce the contents of players hands, to shuffle hands, and to kill characters. The “mobsters” win when the witness is killed. The “rat” after x turns or too many non-witnesses are killed.
5. [Crossroads] 3-6 players. Players use their devilish charm to bid on items and souls. Auction cards trigger a round of bidding for something. Action cards can steal other’s items/souls and impact the outcome of an auction. The player who acquires the most souls at the end of the game becomes the crossroads king, winning the game.