Here’s a refresher on my narrative: 
The theme of my narrative is about going on a journey to find a new home. Since my story is about physical movement from one place to another, I want to create a board game similar to Candyland/Chutes and Ladders/Pictionary in the sense that there is a path with a clear beginning and end, and the objective is to get to the end first. My first thought was to do something very similar to Candyland, but Zach said in one of the lectures that Candyland is actually a simulation since the players only draw cards and do not make any choices. I did some research on race games, and found four different categories: simple, complex, multiplex, and strategic. The simple race game is what Zach referred to as a simulation. In complex race games, players have more than one piece to move, so they make choices about which pieces to move and when. Multiplex games have more emphasis on strategy and less on luck, while strategic games have no element of chance. For this project, I want to do a variation on a complex race game with multiple pieces and multiple paths to get from start to finish.
INITIAL ITERATION
My initial idea was very basic with one path from start to finish. As I watched Zach’s lectures, I started to take notes and add features that would make the game more complex and give players more choice. This turned into a basic concept of a game with multiple paths, multiple pieces per player, chance cards, and challenges at certain points.
This was my first game board iteration. It had two major challenge points, with mini challenges inside. The organization of the paths meant that you could tackle the challenges in any order.
This iteration had one more challenge point which made a number of possibilities for which order players could go. I tested using circles for the spaces, but it ended up looking kind of messy.
I turned the circular spaces back into paths that felt more organized and added some visuals from my storyboard. The colors of the board are based off of the color scheme I used in the storyboard: the home planet was blue, the planet with the monster was maroon/red, and the new planet was yellow. The pink, purple, blue, and green were all pulled directly from the characters.
PROTOTYPE & TESTING
This was my prototype. There would be 2-4 players who would each have four pieces they had to move (they could be the pink, green, purple, or blue alien and would have four of the same piece). The goal was to get all of your pieces from the home planet, through each of the three purple planets, and onto the new yellow planet. Moving would be similar to CandyLand, where players would pick up a color card to see where they could move. They could pick any path so long as all of the pieces went through each planet, and could move any piece on any turn. The maroon planets were challenge points. When you landed on a spot on a planet, you would have five dice and three chances to roll three of whatever number you had landed on. After each roll, you would keep any of the dice that turned up the desired number (think Yahtzee). If you got the three that you needed, you could pick up a color card and move on. If not, you had to wait until your next turn to try again. The chance cards would be mixed in throughout the color cards. If you came upon a chance card, you could decide to pick it up or skip it and pick up a color card (chance cards can have positive or negative effects). I really liked my idea, but I wanted to see how playable it would be so I made a touch version. I printed out the board, color cards, and chance cards, ripped up post-it notes to use as the pieces, and had my family play it with me.
This is a super sped up version of only part of the game. It took a really long time for several reasons: 1) it was new to all of us, so we were learning how to play, 2) there were too many pieces for each person, 3) it was really hard to remember which piece had been to which planet, and which direction they were going in the event that they were bumped back, 4) it turned out that the die-rolling challenges were kind of hard and took many turns. Testing it was super helpful though because I made a ton of improvements that I wouldn’t have thought of if we didn’t play. Plus, it was genuinely fun to play!
These are some of the notes I took during gameplay. I tried to write down what happened during turns, but it was pretty confusing so I decided to just record some of the game and write down feedback. One of the biggest issues we had was that it was very hard to remember which piece had been to which planet. For the purpose of continuing the game, I made a little chart to keep track. My mom mentioned the car from the game of life (which I have never actually played) and that became the solution: players would have spaceships to move around and would collect a piece from each planet so it was easy to know where the piece had been. One drawback from this was that the characters from my storyboard would no longer be pieces in the game. However, the game is very strongly rooted in the story both visually and thematically, so it was definitely worth the sacrifice. I also decided to give each player three pieces instead of four to quicken the pace a little bit.
Another problem was that people would get stuck on planets for a very long time. To make the challenges a little easier, I decided to have four-sided dice instead of the normal six. I also thought it would be a good idea to remove the numbers since they were kind of arbitrary and didn’t add anything to the game. Instead, the dice would be colored and players would just roll for whatever color they had landed on. Since there are now four possible outcomes (pink, purple, blue, green), I chose to reduce the number of spots on each planet from six to four.
While we were playing, my parents suggested that if you spent three turns trying to get off of a planet and continued to fail, you should be able to just move on. I agreed that there should be a cap on rolling, but I felt that there should be some kind of drawback to failing three times, so I put in the following stipulation: If you spend three turns trying to get off of a planet and fail, you may move on, but you must come back and try again at some point in order to collect that planet’s “space rock.”
With the addition of the colored four-sided dice, I figured that these could be used for moving instead of the color cards. Since the chance cards would no longer have color cards to be mixed with, I put chance spaces on the board, with the same premise that you could choose whether or not to pick up the card.
These are some of the new pieces I added. I decided to make the space rocks pyramid shaped to match the shape of the dice. I changed the color of the planets so their space rocks would be distinguishable from each other. The spaceships would have little arrows on the front to indicate which direction they were going. I designed the four-sided dice with organically shaped color splotches on the corners and a dark blue base to match the board.
Here’s the updated board that I posted for our draft discussion. Some of Zach’s feedback was “You might shift the color of the start and end planets, they are very similar to the two planets adjacent to them, unless there is a specific purpose to that?” I didn’t notice that while I was creating the board, but I definitely saw it after he pointed it out. I decided to shift the colors to be more similar to whatever item was on them (astronaut, spaceship, monster) and shift the start and end planets away a little bit.
FEEDBACK
Here are all of the comments I got from our discussions, but I selected the ones that were most constructive and responded to them below:
Kayla: Traversing paths on a board game fits your story well. Think about how the player traverses the board and where more elements of choice and risk/reward could be incorporated. Also, think about if you want to distinguish being on a planet versus being on the gameboard paths through some sort of conditions/mechanics. For example, an expansion for the Marvel Munchkin game has different realms that the players move through throughout the game by way of portal cards, and each realm affects the players in different ways (for example, making enemies stronger, making certain items more effective, or increasing the level needed to win the game). Different planets could affect the player in different ways and create a strategy for how to approach them.
- Being on the planets differs from the rest of the game board through the condition of having to get a certain outcome from rolling the dice, different than rolling the dice to move forward.
Maihan: In terms of your possible rule (of choosing which piece to move before the player picks up a card), I feel like it’d be a really interesting addition to your game and add another element of fate along with the chance cards. This sounds like a fun game & it relates well to your original theme!
Mackie: Allie, your game ideas all align really well with your story! I think keeping the planet aspect ties it all together! I think the game is challenging enough with the aspect of being able to send a player back if you land on their space, so I think the rule of naming which piece you’re going to move before you roll would make it not as competitive/strategic.
- I chose not to incorporate the rule of having to choose which piece you would move before picking up a card/rolling the dice because it made the game unnecessarily hard and took away some strategic choice.
Zach: Great use of space in this and good improvements from last check. You might consider adding a little more choice in the game, right now fate with the cards and dice rolling controls much of the outcome. Love the style that you have maintained with the aesthetics, you may even consider the color/texture of each planet differing to further support each threat visible.
- I added more choice to the game by creating a risk/reward situation with the chance cards. Since chance cards can have positive or negative effects, a player could choose if they want to pick up the card or skip it. I also changed the color of the planets (see boards 3 & 4).
Ben: All of your visuals do a great job of communicating utility and theme. I have a question about the movement mechanic, you say that the outcome of the die corresponds to the color of the space they can move one spaceship to, I am curious if this means the next available space with that color, or any space of that color?
- I clarified in the document that I meant the next space of that color (on any path), not just any available space of that color.
Zach: Awesome visuals! Love the little consistency decisions like maintaining the pyramid with the dice. You might shift the color of the start and end planets, they are very similar to the two planets adjacent to them, unless there is a specific purpose to that? Looks great!
- I changed the color of the planets again (see board 4 & the final document visuals).
FINALIZATION
I finally decided on the title “Space Escape,” and my dad mentioned that the two words had all the same letters. I had noticed that they sounded similar and kind of blend together when you say it out loud, but didn’t think too much about it. I decided to write out the two words to visualize them together. Then I connected the letters with lines and it resembled the paths on the game board which was really exciting – it was one of those moments when you think of something and it just fits perfectly.
The last step was to put together my document, which was really fun. Layout is one of my favorite things, so I spent a lot of time making it look exactly how I wanted. It was frustrating working with Word, which really isn’t made for design, and I found myself wishing I knew how to use InDesign. I didn’t have the time to learn before the project was due so I stuck it out with Word, but I am signing up to take online classes through my local community college that teach Adobe programs. I also had a lot of trouble exporting it as a PDF because it kept messing up the formatting and the font I imported, so I ended up just taking screenshots of the pages and exporting them as a PDF which worked out fine.
