RESEARCH
To begin the new take on this project, we began to research what exactly the conflict, mechanics and goals really mean in a game or while making a game. The conflict is the main issue in the game, or what you are trying to overcome. In my particular game, the main conflict is to avoid the spaceships which shoot lasers to try and get the players to lose stars. Another issue along with avoiding the spaceships and danger spots is to avoid losing all your stars. Losing all of your stars will result in losing the game and not making it to the finish space. The mechanics in a game are the piece that controls most of the players fates or choices. In my game, the main mechanic is the dice. The rolling of the dice controls who goes first, and where the players end up on the board. Another mechanic of mine is the various different types of cards which match the spaces that the players land on. This includes a reward space, a risk space, a danger space and a risk/reward space. Finally, the goal of the game is what the players are trying to achieve while playing the game. In the game I created, the main goal is to finish the game with the most amount of stars. Another underlying goal is to avoid getting hit by the lasers, which will make it harder to win in the end.
VISUALS
Listed here, in order, is how I worked through creating my game. The first photo shows the setup of how I organized each of the types of spaces to land on. I created this in a way so that there was an equal amount of each space, and arranged them so that the game got more difficult as you got closer to the finish. The second photo shows the design of the board that I would have underneath each of the spaces. This includes two spaceships in the top left and bottom right corners, and stars/constellations scattered around. Shown next is how I originally had the symbols for the draft. After getting feedback from the draft, I was told that the safe spaces didn’t communicate “SAFE” as much as I wanted it to. This is shown in the fourth photo as my original sketch for the symbols for safe and danger. In the fifth photo I have shown my iterations for creating a new symbol for SAFE. I immediately thought of the idea of making the safe symbol include a “safety bubble” that would show nothing could hurt the player. I chose to go with the green bubble because green is mostly associated with safety. Shown next is the product of fixing the SAFE space symbol. I have shown in the seventh photo the original sketches of the symbols that I imagined for my game. The only thing that changed with these to the end is that I took away some detail in the reward card symbol and kept one lightning bolt on the risk cards, to keep them more simple. The back of each of the cards is shown next, with examples of what they could say. Next shown is my final creation of the game board and each of the spaces. I also added some planets and laser beams to each of the danger spots, which was also suggested in the discussion board. Lastly, the game pieces are shown. I wanted to keep these simple because the game board already has so much going on. I kept the colors bright so they wouldn’t get lost on the board.
FINAL
Shown above is my final document for the concept of my game. I decided to incorporate the colors I used in my board game and include a light image of the spaceships that I drew on my board tot tie the two together. Creating this document made me feel very confident with how I completed my game and it made me think deeper about it than I did before. I had fun creating this document and it really helped with my process.