I have been doing all I can to hone my design abilities and I am always looking for a new challenge. I have been doing a lot of reading and one area which multiple books have gone over is board games. They have all mentioned that created a board / card game will go a long way to helping better understand the entire game process. I have decided to take on this project (will even be ordering a blank game board etc to work with) and am looking to create something truly original. Much as we have heard from Peter Molyneux for years I am looking to make the player emotional while playing my game.
Allow me to start by giving some back story on what I plan to do. I have been with my girl friend for about six months currently and this will of course be our first Christmas together. I plan on having this game be one of my gifts for her if all works out as I hope. I am looking for this to become a game that will help people get to know each other better. (significant other, friend, family member, etc)
I have only been contemplating this game for the past few days so this is all in a very prototype form but this is what I am currently looking at:
Tentative Title: The Game of Life: Through Good and Bad
Number of Players: 2
Includes:
- Game Board
- One Die
- Red and Blue Playing Cards
- Player Pieces
In my honest opinion the only way a player will feel emotion from a game is if they are able to relate to the games experience or if they are creating the experience themselves. This is exactly why I plan on having the players involved in this game as much as possible.
This game includes two sets of cards: Red and Blue. Red cards depict a bad life moment while Blue cards relate to a good life moment.
Before the game actually starts the players must do a few things which include:
- Splitting up the pile of Red and Blue cards between the two players
- Each player must write on the backs of the cards good and bad moments in their life (I would love for the back of these cards to use a white-board like material so that it could be easily re-used but I am not sure I will be able to find anything like that)
- Once the players have finished with their cards they give them to the other player
- Players then are able to pick their game piece and begin playing
Relationships in life (romantic or otherwise) can be broken down into roads which may run together or break apart. The only way for any relationship to be successful is to make sure that even though you may take separate roads in life you always need to branch back together in order to keep the relationship at a healthy level and the two people involved not change so much that they do not even know each other anymore.
I have this depicted in my game board.
When you first start the game you are at the bottom left corner of the game board. When the player rolls the die for the first time it will decide which path they take (Even being top path, Odd being lower path).
I am still currently working on the game board and how exactly the game flow will work but I have made a decent amount of progress so far.
Some areas which I am working on:
- Winning Condition: Will winning simply mean that you made it to the end of the path before the other player or should the game have further meaning. Instead of being a game where everyone is focused on finishing the game as quickly as possible I may actually change things so that the player who reaches the end with the most cards is actually the winner. This would be the player who was actually able to have the larger emotional experience and learn the most about the other person so why wouldn't they be the winner?
- Game board shape: I am trying to figure out exactly how the board will look and how the paths will be shaped. I need to figure out where I will be putting the Red and Blue spaces (to pick up the cards) and what I will be doing with them. I originally was planning on making it so that if you hit a red space you have to go back a space and if you hit a blue space you gain a space but if I change the meaning of the game to being the player with the most Moment cards wins I may make that the opposite.
I will be working on this a lot within the next month (all my space time essentially) so I hope to be posting quite a bit on this topic or at the very least have some images of the final product.
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