2330

Analogue Game Design

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Process

For an in-depth  process of developing the gameplay and aesthetics of the board please refer to the pdf below
Hacker 3

Continue reading for a more concise process

Iterations

First idea

My first idea was to make the game security guard vs. hacker where players played mini games to advance in the game.

I decided against this game because I wanted the game to be a game, and not just a format to count points for two people playing mini games — it didn’t fit in with the sci-fi theme of the board

Draft

this is my final draft! At this point I was really excited and had an almost clear idea of how I thought the game play would work.

 

Goal

The goal of the game is to be the first ‘hacker’ to successfully hack your way through blocked pathways to retrieve software, and then escape!

 

Gameplay

Player pull cards that serve as classified “coding” that locks and unlocks pathways. Strategy comes into play with these cards because players can shut pathways on each other, or lock in someone who has retrieve the software!

Once a player reaches the software, if they don’t have a key then they have to take a longer route to escape. This makes the game riskier as you are able to lose the software by being on the wrong space, or getting passed by another player.

Mechanics

You use dice for the turns, you can move in any direction but can not back track within a turn, you can open pathways but if a pathway that is open correlates to the pathway on that card that says “anti code” then it shuts that pathway, the green triangle (the software) fits in the game pieces so players can ‘hold’ it, and red triangles work the same way (which you can earn from landing on a space with a red triangle). Players can exit through where they got the software only if they are holding a key, if not they have to go the long way. Players can steal keys.

One mechanic that I was really excited about and think it would give the game a lot of personality if it was physical was the use of covering blocked pathways with a piece of plastic that slides out from under the board like in the travel bingo that I used to play on road trips as a kid (pictured below)

 

Packaging Iterations

I spent a lot of time trying to get the aesthetics of the packaging right. I studied previous 80s art styles and color schemes (which is included in the PDF at the top under ‘process’). So I knew I wanted to include neons and a perspective grid. I also wanted to include the use of chrome letters and wanted to use the green triangle from the game within the design.

Below are my favorite versions that I came up with.

 

Final Visuals

 

 

Narrative Style

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Short Story

My short story followed the path of stories that have “un-endings”. The ending revealed that my character was being watched and studied because my character was created to be a computer. I then developed him into romance (which I picked eventually), Dystopian (which I didn’t pick because it was arguably already close to dystopian), and Comedy (which I did not pick because of the lack of dialogue in the storyboard frames).  You can view my short story and variations and genre research here: Short Story

 

Defining and Planning my Frames

I really wanted to focus on color and compositional elements for this project. I made sure that what I wanted was defined as opposed to being random. My process for these decisions can be viewed here: Study for Narrative Storyboard

 

I found that futurism and surrealism supported the mood of this story because the girl fell in love with an intuitive AI (which seems like a very possible thing to happen in the distant future). I wanted surrealism to be involved as well because I wanted to capture how love makes one feel everything just a little bit stronger. When you are in love you seem to notice everything a little bit more (especially surrounding the person you are in love with).

 

Final

This project was a great opportunity to challenge my planning skills and execution skills. My personal goal for projects this semester is to not go off the beaten path. Usually I ideate as I go, but I want to be able to ideate and then go. I want the end result of a project to resemble what I initially planned for it to resemble. I am proud of myself for completing the project in a very thorough manner, and hope to continue to develop that skill. You can view my final with the final story description outlined with it here: Narrative Style final

Dynamic Page

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Morph Exercises

Taking a scuba helmet and transforming it into a snail helped me to think and pay attention to those important middle stages.

Combining three images AND their transitions was a good exercise to get in the right mindset to think and work with that concept of middle ground. Here I incorporated a tree and a bank to give the feel of a stream. I then made the majority of it the river with the ocean in the background.

 

Visualizations

Over the process of ideating, I gained more clarity on what type of transition I wanted to pursue. Some of my more favorite ideas were: childbirth, smoking cigarettes, irresponsibility causing bad grades, and an idea of a change in generations over time. Although I didn’t choose any of those, I kind of took that idea of generation change and ran with it. You can find rough sketches of my initial ideas here!

 

Prototypes

During my prototyping phase, I was still unsure of what exactly I wanted to pursue. I used this time to construct varying mechanics that I hoped would spark some ideas through seeing the different motions and uses of shape and space. During this time I became interested in a cyclical usage (especially because I wanted to deal with a change over time and a circle is common symbolism of clocks and connections). I began to come up with the idea of the transition of the 1920s to the 2020s. I thought I could start with an image that represented the 1920s and then ‘fast forward’ through the decades to reveal the 2020s. During the critique of the ideation draft, the point was brought up that we don’t quite know what 2020 will even be. This inspired me to go down a path of ‘we decide the future’. You can view my prototypes right here

Final Dynamic Page

 

My final model plays on the fact that even though society has changed and warped dramatically over the decades, we have continued to experiment with pop culture, art, and expression. How I achieved this was by modeling the project after vinyl records because the popularity of records skyrocketed in the 1920s.

You can view the breakdown of the mechanics and reasoning here

 

Decades!

In my wheel I modeled each section by its corresponding decade!

1920 was modeled after the record and the black and gold Art Deco color scheme

1930 was modeled after the black and white Oxford shoe

1940 was modeled after the American flag for WWII

1950 was modeled after the popular red dress with white polka dots trend

1960 was modeled after the moon landing

1970 was modeled after the classic teal and white VW van

1980 was modeled after popular patterns that included fun geometric shapes and bright colors

1990 was modeled after the classic disposable cup with the blue and purple design

2000 was modeled after the popular color scheme at the time with popular use of stars and asymmetric pattern

2010 was modeled after the popular use of rainbow zebra print

2020 was not modeled after anything, but does have some abstracted pathway-looking design because I wanted to symbolize that we don’t know what the decade will be so we decide what path to go down.