Board Game Testing with another group

Pirate Game

This board game came across as  a very aesthetically pleasing piece. The board itself was very colourful and not overly complex in detail which automatically indicated to me that this game was ideally aimed for the younger generations. Another factor that aided me in that thought was the actual playing pieces or 'counters' were cartoon shaped skulls, that varied in all sorts of bright and colourful tones. I believe they did this in order to stay true to their target audience, as younger generations often like to be able to chose from either a favourite design or colour, for example a boy may want to use the blue piece etc. It adds further involvement within the game play, which i believe is a small yet excellent way to keep the target immersed.


Aim of the game:


You each have a ship which has to travel around the board with the rolling of a die,whilst obtaining resources to increase the strength and dexterity of it. Within doing this process you can combat other ships to gain more resources to aid you to fight an NPC at the end of the game, which after defeated leads to the hidden treasure in the centre of the board. Once the treasure is captured you win and it's game over. However, you need to strategically use your resources in order to increase the power of your ship in order to survive the battles between you and your opponents.


The battle mechanic works when you land on the same section on the board. From here you must both roll a die and the person with the highest number wins the fight, and the person with the lowest loses. From this battle you can either steal your opponents resources if you win, or lose your own if you fail. However, you DO NOT have to battle the opponent if you cross them, it is simply optional. But if you decide not to battle you could technically lose out on gaining easy resources at not cost, so this gaming element really adds a sense of risk which i think is a very good factor to have in this sort of game. You are left with options in how you can obtain your resources, you can stock up and battle but at the expense that you may fail and lose everything. It also adds a sense of luck as well, as in hope that you will always roll a higher number.


Also within the game you can stop at resource points where you can acquire items such as Cabin crew, rum, wood, iron and gold. At one point on the board there is a docking section in which you can store your resources and upgrade your ships defences, cannons and crew capacities. It has a very well thought out mechanic within it, as in order to obtain more resources as you go along, you will NEED to upgrade your ship to get more Crew, more crew means more capacity for resources. So you need to use your moves and time wisely in order to get the most out of your upgrades, and to also increased the likely hood of you winning against other opponents including the NPC. Once your ship has increased greatly in all sectors, you can opt to fight the NPC and battle it out in hope to get to the hidden treasure in the centre. However, you NEED to make sure you have upgraded your ship sufficiently, as if you fail you could lose so much more than what you initially began with.


Play Test:


I really liked the concept of thinking strategically with how you obtained your resources to your advantage. I also liked how it was entirely your decision how you played a part within the game. I think this was an excellent way to make the player feel more individual and unique within the game, as it was based around what you wanted to do and the sacrifices you could make. It had more involvement with me as a person and i became immersed within battles to gain the resources. However, i got foolish and thought i could combat anyone with the luck from my dice rolls, but i soon found myself losing all my resources at the expense of greed. It's a very good learning process as well, to try and control how the game is playing out by thinking ahead of your opponents, and upgrading your ship wisely.


The only issue i found with the game is that it took a very long time to upgrade your ship and battle for the treasure. I found myself 40 minutes within the game and not even travelled around the board once! i think there needs to be a way in which resources can be stocked quicker or more efficiently, so that building up your ship is faster: As it seems that is the only issue is it takes too long. However, it cannot be made too simple as it could become very easy and not feel like you a fighting for the treasure, more like just playing by the rules.


Overall i think this board game has a lot of potential and i did find it pleasing to play with. I hope that the group would be able to speed up the game play process as i found it dragged on for too long. Judging by the enthusiasm of the team i have no doubt they could alter this, and push forward to make their board game a success. I think it greatly appeals to the target audience and also uses game play wisely to keep the player immersed and engaged.

Colour Theory Wheel

Aside from just oil, most of the mechanics in that era required steam to help objects move. Steam is generated from a high temperature of water, or in other cases acts as condensation in colder environments. Steam is water vapour which in time would lead to rusting and the wearing away of parts or surfaces of metals and mechanical structures. So along side the smoke that blackens the construct, the power of steam and rust development enhances that 'aged' look.

First Robots Concepts

 Here is my first initial drawing for my robot concept within our board game. Based on my research of futuristic robots, i came up with this design. I wanted to keep the shapes simplistic so it would clearly represent modern technology, in which robots are usually associated with. I also kept the bodily structure similar to that of a humans, so the parts could be recognized easier between the younger and older generations: Parts such as the arms having shoulders, elbows and wrist joints. Within using this form of design, my robot will now be able to be disassembled and rebuilt efficiently, without mixing up the parts due to confusion of body structure. I really began to focus on the characteristics of the robot, to successfully achieve an authentic feel. As our concept progressed, we came to the conclusion of mad scientists coming together to build the perfect robot. When i associated myself with mad scientists, i usually came up with the thought of 'evil' so i had to incorporate this into my design. To take this into effect, i thought the best way to portray evil would be through the eyes, as it is the main focus point in order to receive emotion.

From my research of existing robots, i noticed how certain designs used different colours and shapes to define the emotion of the character. By giving the eyes a inverted length, i was able to achieve the look of a 'frown' to highlight the sense of evil, or rage. I came up with this by also looking at the facial structure of us as humans when we frown or become enraged. Our eyebrows invert above our eyes and create contours that express that emotion. Here is an image i found to hopefully emphasise what i mean.

Once i constructed the basic shape of the eyes, i decided to colour them in a way that i believe represented evil the most. We refer the colour 'red' to describe many emotions, both good or bad for example, passion or love and aggression or rage. It only seemed natural to add this colour to the eyes of my robot design, as it perfectly represented evil.

This is my finished first concept for my robot design. I wanted to give my robot more texture than the previous sketch, so i uploaded the drawing into 'Photoshop' and began applying tonal and textured surfaces. Although my robot is a futuristic type, i wanted to give it a 'used' and rustic feel, so that the image had more visual depth and appeal. To do this i found a nice brush pattern online which represented scratches and rough surfacing. I applied the scratched patterns into sections of the robot's body, by using the opacity tool on a low percentage i could alter the texture to make it realistic. To add further depth within the surface, i used a small plain brush with both white and black tones. From there i also made the opacity quite low, and adapted the scratches so they had highlights and shadows. This allowed the texture to be embedded within the character's bodywork and made it look more three dimensional. Finally i selected a rustic brown colour for the soft brush tool. I changed the opacity low once again and began layering the tone over the surface of the robot's body. I really liked this effect, as it gave the character more personality and structure than the standard finish it had before.

Although i am usually against certain Photoshop filters, i wanted to experiment with a couple of them so i could obtain a greater perspective on the different tonal and art styles. This particular filter 'Fresco' really caught my eye because of it's emphasis on the texture and also how it contrasted heavily to make the character much darker. This whole concept of altering the darkness gave the character new sinister meaning, because of how it emerged from the darkness. Also how it's eyes stay bright and reflective within the darkness, adds an element of being watched even though most of the figure is concealed inside the shadows. With this one adaptation of adding a filter, it really changed the emotional feelings towards the character.

 

Here is the final filter i liked whilst looking for other styles. I really liked this particular filter because it defined the scratched texture more predominately than it originally was. I also admired the way the highlights and shadows mixed with the rustic brown in a vectorized format, instead of blended smoothly. It makes the character look more cartoon like which could appeal more to our target audience in a sense, as the younger generation watches cartoons more so than older people. However, the true reason in which i admire this filter is because of how it has adapted my shading technique into singular cell shaded colours. I simply applied shadows and highlights by using black and white with a soft brush at a low opacity, however in this adaptation you can clearly see how i have layered the shading, which i really like.

Bibliography

. Google Images

. Brusheezy.com

Build it up Concept Ideas

Concept Idea

With much discussion, our group managed to come together with a concept that fed off all of our design ideas. By breaking ourselves into sections of the design process, we came up with an idea that we all felt happy with. We wanted to give the art style a less futuristic feel, to keep in line with the older idea of architecture (historical buildings) but to use robots instead. We automatically came to the conclusion that a pre-war, 1930’s style was perfect for this sort of idea. Reason being is we can make the game entirely fictional because of the lack of robotics during the Victorian era. Alongside this, it would also appeal to our target audience as it invites them to use their imagination within the design, but to also keep the idea focused on older generations with the designated art style. Using this theme enabled us to experiment with the histories of older mechanics and what things would’ve looked like during that time frame.  It became familiar with the ‘steam punk’ feel, but wanted to steer away from that idea due to the clichés that already exist, so we kept steady with what was outstanding in history and used it to our advantage.

The 1930’s was a very rustic and industrial time. The colours usually included dark colours like, browns, blacks, rusty oranges and steels. Also colours like dull greens and reds were used as they were often used to represent military rank or status. I constructed a colour chart to get a rough idea of the palette I would use to apply tonal work to my finalized robot idea. I wanted to give him this industrial, war machine type feel, as if it was constructed for a robot army in upcoming war. After sketching and playing around with modernized colours and shapes, i wanted to take a more complex approach to show the workings of how the robot would function, just like in the 1930’s with steam trains or sewing machines. Here are some images both representing this, and tonal range:

As clearly shown, most of these mechanics show the works on and around the outside; it wasn’t very well concealed as items today. We tend to hide the inner workings with plastic or metal casings, for both a better appeal and also to give the item a longer shelf life. From these images I can understand that in order to make a successful 1930’s looking robot, I had to adopt the older designs. With that in mind, I wanted to focus on the facial structure of my older robot, as I believe it can be the most important feature of a character. To aid me within this process i used my current knowledge to pick out existing examples, where both video games and movies have adopted a similar style.

I chose two main character designs that  i believe represent our chosen era, and the art style i want to produce during my Photoshop work. These are 'The Big Daddy' from Microsoft's Xbox 360 video game called 'Bioshock' and 'The Iron Giant' animated movie made by 'Warner Bros'. Both of these media have successfully researched and portrayed a style of robot that resembles their chosen historic period (1930's-1950's) which is the same as ours. It was interesting to see how they used the rustic colours i implied earlier and also showing the inner workings on the surface, such as bolts, screws, metal and chains.

From this close analysis  i wanted to construct a facial feature that represented victorian warfare. I wanted my robot to have a very military look and feel so i thought of the perfect idea. Instead of adding jaw lines or major facical structures, i simple made the head into the form of a 2nd world war gasmask. Within using this idea i can not only adopt the style of the era, but also add the militant and warlike feel. However, it didn't seem alien or robotic enough for me, so i decided to have one large central eye instead of two standard sized ones. As this added to the fictional feeling of 'alien' with this mechnical creature, and to fully add that concept of and older design. From this i can now shape the body in a tradtional way by using more simplistic shapes but also keeping in mind the complexities of the innerworkings viewable. I believe within using these factors i will be able to successfully create a robot that is sufficient within the time frame we have chosen for this board game idea.

:)

Bibliography:

. Google Images

Development of Build it up

Development

I decided to have a concept that was favoured among all generations from child to adult. The idea of a robot, I believe appeals a broader audience because of it’s popularity. As our future expands and evolves, the human race is gradually becoming dependant on robot mechanics to aid us in life. We have always involved our future to be robot inhabitant, so much so we make movies, stories and even video games about them. For example, existing media like ‘Transformers, “Star Wars’ and ‘War of the worlds’ all involve the idea of interacting/living with or against robots in our future. Even video games like ‘Halo’, ‘borderlands’ and ‘ Lost Planet’ use robots or similar mechanised suits, that look remarkably futuristic and robot like.

As our technology progresses, our human mind has stayed curious with the prospect of robots, that we go to extraordinary lengths to express the way we would react to them. Almost as if it is a form of preparation in how we would approach robots in our future. From this, I believe using this theme is an ideal concept to appeal to a vaster audience, as the interest for them our exceedingly high in our current era.

I began looking at robot designs that exist across multiple entertainment platforms, to get gather an understanding of robot concepts for ideas. I wanted to fetch for a sleek and futuristic design, and with that in mind I used my current knowledge and devised a group of robotic characters I believe would contribute to my productions.  I chose a cartoon I used to watch when I was younger called ‘Robot boy’ it’s a story about a robot that was designed to be used as a weapon, but it’s creator chose a different lifestyle for the creature and sent it to live a normal life similar to a younger boy, hence the title ‘Robot Boy’ It’s interesting to see how the artist has masked the robot’s violent capabilities by giving it a ‘cuter’ appeal, something that is more appropriate for a younger audience. Given that our target audience is 10+, I think this is a good approach to research in terms of simplistic and suitable designs. The colours are minimal within Robot boy’s structural make up, alongside the solid shapes give this character a true sense of simplicity and futurism. I liked the idea of his emotion change that his eyes change from green to red when he becomes angry. Using basic emotional colours, we can already assume that green is a neutral and a positive colour, whereas, red is best resembling rage which is negative. Within using this structure it is simple for both older and younger generations to identify the emotions of this character, indicating to me that simplicity is key here to achieve a successful looking futuristic robot. It does not to be overcomplicated to effectively portray the features of the creature.

I also decided to look at something more structural and believably realistic. I chose ‘Star Wars’ for this as I think it is one of the most successful ways of portraying human life with artificial life. Here are some image examples of how I can link robots to us (likeness):

The initial concept of our board game was to have a landscape where you build architecture into miniature cities. It seemed apparent that I was the only one who thought this idea was plain and boring. In a sense I liked the idea of being able to build miniature versions of constructs, but it seemed it could get tedious and become quite dull for the audience we are aiming for. What I like most about our idea is that we can change the theme quite easily and still would be able to be playable. Like Monopoly we could make all kinds of variants to suit every kind of audience, from children to the elderly: but we needed a solid initial design. I wanted to take the approach of building a robot because it is something more presentable and aesthetically pleasing to all target audiences, they would be many ways in which the characters could look or function and have still keep some relation to our outstanding artwork. I believe using the robot theme adds creativity and excitement, as they can take on all sorts of forms. Whereas architecture concepts would stay the same solid and dull shape throughout. There needs to be a variety of colours, shapes and textures to grab the attention of anyone in our target audience, and I strongly believe that robotics is the way forward with our board game mechanics.

There were some disagreements in how we would go about this production, how the themes would fit together fairly from the team’s artistic perspectives. We had to work hard together to devise a new way in which we could all be satisfied and end up with an attractive and fun board game. We began adopting the theme of a pre-war 1930’s style that both would resemble old architecture and open possibilities of robot designs. With this in mind we could devise new ideas and come together as a team to produce an ideal board game that would please all of our aspirations.

Bibliography:

. Google Images

First concept for Build it up Rules

Build it up.

Target audience - 10+ years

Players – 2-4

Genre – Race within using a Die and counters (Grid based)

Four cornered board, colour coded to players. Players gaming areas submitted to one corner of the board.

Concept – Depending on the style of the board game, one must gradually build up an item in their corner by obtaining building pieces as they work around the board. Money is a crucial element, as it is the foundation of where you can obtain your pieces. You can both be rewarded money, and have it taken from you in certain circumstances or situations. You must work strategically and use your money wisely to gather all the pieces you require in order to make your item.

Goal – the aim of the game is to build your item first before anyone else. To make sacrifices and think logically on how you can manipulate your opponents into collecting more money to build your item. There will be sections around the board game that can trip you up in your success, and do NOT forget that the opposing players can also affect your progression.

Squares (on the grid of the board)

. Pay day – Each time your return to your building sector, you will be given cash to help pay for the expenses for building your item. However, money MUST be used wisely in case of any unexpected decisions that may need to be made, which may result in loss of cash.

. Trading block – These squares will allow you to interact with your opponents. If an opposing player has gathered a piece of building you require, you can purchase that item off them, but at double the standard price. This enhances sacrifice in order to win, that you must use your money wisely in case certain pieces cannot meet you demise to begin with.

. Building tiles – depending on the style of the game will determine what pieces you will need to make your item/object. It will be divided into sections across the board grid, so that you must work your way around to get those important pieces in order to construct successfully. For example, if it was an architectural based game where you were making buildings, your object could be divided into walls, flooring and roofing.

. Tax Payers – Or of anything equivalent. These tiles will be used to take money from you accordingly, to pay for the moves you have taken across the board. These are also used to slip you up along your transition to success, it is where money because more important as you know you are due to pay out for things, OTHER than your building materials.

Accidents – Also another way to trip you up during the game play. These will vary depending on the style of the game, but initially it would be expenses if damage were caused to your or your structure. For example, with architectural designs, playing on certain tiles could indicate structural issues, like Dry rot, water damage and weather issues? Etc. If it us unfortunate in the event that you land on one of these tiles, you must pay out for the damaged caused in order to rescue your constructions.

Delivery trucks – Or of anything equivalent. As you would only be aloud to transport one piece at a time, this tile will give the chance to carry up to two pieces, to both help save time and obtain the pieces quicker in order to

Primary board game Research 2

The Computer Game Design Course

Thames & Hudson.

By Jim Thompson, Barnaby Berbank-Green and Nic Cusworth.

 I decided to look at more modernized book to research the historic principles of board game design. The book I researched previously was made during the 1960’s, so that the text format was quite formal and complicated in places to understand fully. I thought it would be a good idea to get a more up to date response to the history, and see if I could relate more to what is being highlighted.  Also from the last book, it was just explanations of how to play more ancient games, not really much information about them, I had to read heavily through the lines to find the answers to my questions.

Within this book it clearly highlights the importance of older generations of gaming, and how we must appreciate the early stages of game developments, as it is a crucial landmark of where the future of Game design evolves. Ever since the first known game ‘Senet’ was constructed, the human species has been exposed to the nature of game play, and how rules also known as mechanics. Play significant roles in different types of board game. A researcher in 1938 known as Johan Huizinga, conducted an analysis in his seminal work ‘Homo Ludens’, translating to ‘man as player’. He quotes the importance of game play:” Play is voluntary activity or occupation executed within certain fixed limits of time and place, according to rules freely accepted but absolutely binding, having its aim in itself and accompanied by a feeling of tension, joy, and the consciousness that is ‘different’ from ‘ordinary life’ I personally greatly admire this quote, as it expresses the understanding of how we as human’s enjoy playing games. Since the dawning of ‘gaming’ we have been subjected to playing by rules, using our minds and thinking strategically. Using chance, luck or diplomacy. It’s what makes games exciting, and since then has attracted the human nature positively for all these thousands of years to come, even right up to the digital gaming aspect.

I also noticed through this book, on how it emphasises the importance of goals and rewards. That games were invented to bring an outcome: A Winner and a loser. Within using the right game mechanics, players always want to come out on top: To beat your opponent, which leads to competitive play, which is one of the many reason why people engage with them. Becoming the winner at any sort of game, whether it requires significant theories, like luck, territory control, and strategy or resource management, makes you feel very accomplished and proud. This sort of feeling towards winning creates an adrenaline rush, which empowers even more so to get involved and play a game: The idea of succeeding.

From only these couple of pages, I have derived that playing games is an inherent and integrated aspect of many cultures and histories. Using all sorts of games to connect with people’s passion for entertainment, challenge and reward. How we must appreciate our ancestors of game design, as it was for them who created gaming mechanics and concepts. With our history we have learnt, adapted and reconstructed the past into present day marvels, by continuously driving forward with making games a vital part of human entertainment.

Bibliography

. The Computer Game Design Course

‘Principles, practices and techniques for the aspiring game designer’

By Jim Thompson, Barnaby Berbank-Green and Nic Cusworth. Quotes from pages 12 & 13.

. Google Images

Primary board game Research

Board & Table games 2 for many civilizations

By R.C Bell

. Book chosen to look at how different cultures have adapted their own versions of popular games today. Also to understand the mechanics of older board games and how they can relate to more present ones.

-          Historic values to look out how board games have developed over the last century.

One thing I noticed through scanning this book is that the older board games before the 19^th century were all made out of very extravagant materials, far more so than games of our present era. The Far Eastern regions, Egypt, and Africa used materials such as, Ivory, Bone, Shell, Gold, Walnuts and Lacquered finishing to produce board games. Even Europe used materials such as China, mother of pearl, Deer’s antlers and marble. All continents used materials pretty specific to their homeland, which is clearly understood due to trading posts or them at the time were rare, or unknown.

From this use of complex and expensive materials, I can determine that board games had much greater importance back in history. It would take time to make the games with the lack of useful facilities, so a lot of effort was put into the construction to make them more worth their while. It makes a great deal of sense, as surely in the older time periods, sources of that kind of entertainment were rare. It mainly consisted of reading, listening to music or playing sport. The development of the board game gave a new source of interactivity that appealed to many people, family and friends that could all get together and socially in the comfort of their own home. It would appear, that only wealthier people would’ve been able to afford the board games, due to the expense of the materials used. This already indicates to me where the term of a ‘Target Audience’ began, not necessarily for age, but for social status.

Within this book I found a very popular board game that is still well known today. The term of Chess has expanded greatly across many countries where it has been adapted, and altered to that particular culture. As far as materials go, I believe that both the Chessboard and pieces have been made out of every kind! Even up to our present time with all the kinds of plastics, wood and glass. I found three different alterations of chess, with similar features but all presenting unique designs.

-          The Burmese chessboard of teak, and pieces of pinkadoe. Modern, but still shows signs of traditional forms. Opening positions advised by Bastian, and Shway Yoe.

-          Siamese chessboard and pieces. Also modern looking, but has kept the traditional layout of figures have stayed the same.

-          A reproduction of a Japanese chessboard and pieces, arranged for the start of the game quite differently to what we are familiar with. This is also known as ‘Shogi’.

From analyzing this, it fascinated me how even slight cultural differences can greatly affected the same genre of game. How specific iconic characters, religions and languages from that country can change both the rules and make up of the gaming style, whilst keeping the ACTUAL genre identical. With all the new types of starting positions and rules, the concept of Chess stayed the same by using certain symbolic pieces and board designs (checked) it also hosted the tradition of genre, as a patient and compelling, turn based game.

Aside from Chess I also noticed other games in the book, and how they looked like earlier versions of ones in our present era. Tangram in particular caught my eye, for the fact of using random shapes to make silhouettes of existing figures/animals/items etc. It reminded my of a game called Pictionary that we often use in present day, for it’s fun in making up images out of questions. However, I understand the rules of Tangram are different, but the idea of composing imaginative pictures was identical, and gave me a better insight to the creativity of both then and now. The concept of that style of board game, gives more freedom to the players to use their own ideas and make the game turn out in a direction more relatable to themselves. I think it’s an important mechanism to make the player feel 100% immersed within the game, so that the amusement and entertainment factor can have solid stability for years to come. Games like Monopoly, Chess, Pictionary, and Scrabble all take similar approaches by producing different styles of one game, so that the customer audience can appeal to such a broader spectrum of players.

Tangram – Chinese shape making, reminds me slightly of Japanese Origami, and how shapes are folded instead of aligned to make shapes or silhouettes of figures.

In comparison to our current era, board games have seemed to lose a great deal of importance in our futuristic world. Now with technology moving forward, and developing digital gaming, the board game franchise has been tossed aside. Also with the input of Television, CDs, DVDS and cinema there seems to be less and less reason to play them. Without sounding to bias in that statement, board games are still used and admired for many people across all countries, and taking the most popular style of game and either changing portrays this in it’s design or style, or even making it entirely digitally based for continuous entertainment use. For example games like, Chess, Scrabble, Monopoly and Mah-jong have many types of versions, and also been enhanced into the digitally interactive world, more specifically for the PC and consoles known as the Nintendo Wii, or DS. In doing this particular development, older games in the board game genre can live a bit longer and survive in our expanding world, without being so left behind with materialistic based game play.

This book was divided into 9 main genres of board game during the 18^th-19^th century. These are:

-          Race – element of speed or time

-          War – Chess based, positional based on actual militia attire

-          Positional – Like checkers, chess, Ma-Jong.

-          Mancala – similar to Chess in the West/Arabic for ‘to move’/played in Syria, Lebanon and Egypt. Originally made in Africa.

-          Dice – Luck/Chance

-          Domino – Numeric

-          Words and Numbers – Spelling/Grammar/Numeric/Anagrams

-          Card games requiring boards

-          Manual Dexterity – often requires players to create a lot of the board game, whether it’s the actual board or if the game requires you to be moving in a certain way.

I was really taken by one bit of information that I found on the chapter ‘War Games’ Apparently, board games had great importance during many War’s as it acted as a catalyst for decision making and progression. I quote “ The Queen and her advisers placed more faith and victory on the result of an official game between designated professionals than they did on their army.” From this small amount of data, I can already indicated the severity of board games in older eras, and how they do not compare to present day examples. That actual military manoeuvres were derived from the victor of playing a strategic based board game: It sounds terribly foolish today, but only with what examples I am exposed to, not from how games were made or treated in earlier centuries.

Overall from this book I have learnt how board games during the 18^th-19^th century had far much more severe importance, than to what we have in our present day. The majority were constructed from the finest materials, and were aimed for the richer and more socially high in status. Although the poor did have games in their discretion, but nothing in comparison to what was actually available for the wealthier. I also learned how we have obtained many inspirations from our board gaming past, and how we have adapted original concepts into modernized styles.

Bibliography

. R.C Bell Board and Table games2 for many civilizations:

- Page 75, 67-69, 60, 44, 45, 24 for image and certain text referencing (quotes)

. Google images:

-          Pictionary

-          Chess

-          Tangram

-          Shogi

Impact Zone board game Research

Impact Zone

After close research within the book of ‘Board and Table games2’ I wanted to have another go at playing a board game that had more of a distinct look. I have already played Scotland’s yard, and understand the principles of the concept and rules, however this game is vastly popular: I wanted to play something a bit more quirky, or different in genre.

I went out into the city and decided to target more charity-based shops, as I know there would be less popular board games available with them. Reason being, people don’t usually get rid of the board games that are well known or better in terms of game play, so I wasn’t expected the perfect playing game but the curiosity got the better of me. I managed to find a game that I was very unfamiliar with called’ Impact Zone’ I analyzed the box art and scanned through the text advertised around it, and soon came to notice the target audience without paying attention to the age recommendation. On the cover it had two young children appearing to be hunting for something, just from the gestures of the figures I can determine that this game will be a game that requires strategic thinking (at a child’s level) to locate pieces. Although the description on the cover did inform that it would be a game that requires the player to find missing pieces, the actual box came with no manual or instructions. Thankfully I determine a lot from the pieces used and how the board was constructed, in fact it reminded me of a popular and well-played board game called ‘Battle Ships’.

Concept:

. Aliens have crash-landed in a space ship in the remote desert.

. You as the player required locating the missing pieces of the crashed ship and putting them together before your opponent does.

. However, you will be tripped up by other foes know as the Coyote, Rattlesnake and haunted underground mines. These will through you off your track as you try to hunt for the missing space ship pieces.

Game play:

. Players have set squares called zones that cover both halves of the board; these zones go up to number 42. The board is divided into two by a piece of cardboard representing the landscape design of the concept; this is used to conceal the position in which the opponent has placed the missing pieces.

. Each player in turn must randomly call out a zone number on the opponents board, if that zone is empty, a small cactus shaped piece must be put down on that square, so you can identity in the future where you have played. From this, you can begin to strategically plot out where possible pieces of the space ship would be, by making patterns and using moves wisely.

. If a player calls out a zone, which is either occupied by a piece of space ship, or other opposing enemy (rattlesnake, mine, coyote) a button symbolizes the pieces and must be pressed to indicate what the opponent has found. If it is indeed a piece of the space ship, the button must be sounded and then you must build your opponents spaceship for them on your side of the board.

. The first player to make up the entire spaceship by successfully collecting all the pieces must push down on the space ship, So that a light and sound emits indicating the end of the game and the winner.

Target Audience:

-          On the box target audience states over the age of 10 years.

I believe that this board game has done reasonably well with its target audience, especially with the use of colour and design. The board is well designed in terms of the construction of pieces and how it has laid out impressive graphics to give that illusion of being in this remote desert. Also the concept of having sound playing an important role, also attracts the attention of children as it gives them more involvement within the game play mechanics. Also the idea of collecting and puzzle building is a good way to get a young person to think more logically than any other games: However it does have a lot of downsides from my perspective. I’ve made a pro’s and con’s list so I can identify exactly what makes this game good or bad.

Pros:

-          Is well designed in terms of graphics and sound. Makes the experience very interactive and immerse for the suited age.

-          The concept of thinking carefully about where you have placed your own pieces, in terms of where your enemies are is impressive in terms of keep the attention span going.

-          The use of buttons as an area for sound to emit, would appeal more to children, as it would make them feel more in control with how the game is progressing.

Cons:

-          The idea for putting in other creatures such as the rattlesnake, coyote and haunted mine seems a little unnecessary. They have no importance within the actual game play, it just seems it’s there for the idea of pressing the sound buttons, which indeed would appeal to the younger generation even though they lack importance.

-          The fluidity of the mechanics is very, very slow in terms of the game play. Not even as you draw closer to collect more and more pieces of the space ship, the pace doesn’t increase at all. In fact for the simplicity of the game, it seems rather pointless to make it slower. I can understand respectively that children would take longer to adapt to the scenarios and rules, but I believe the turn base style is even too slow for them, and would not keep them entertained for long.

Overall:

The game as a whole is harmless fun that can quite possible achieve the entertainment of its target audience. With the powerful use of graphics and audio, it has given the board game new modes of immersive interactivity, which is a good factor to keep the players pleased. It also allows the player to think cleverly and plan routes of where possible pieces can be obtained, based on moves that have already been taken. However, the game play is too slow to keep both myself, and as far as I believe any one under my age interested. Even with the enhancement of adding nicer imagery and sound, it is not enough to continuously keep the attention span of a child. If there was an element of time, or something where the speed had to be increased in order to win, I think this would make the game play far much better. As it would require you to think hastily, and react quickly to how your opponent is moving towards your designated zones.

Notes from Overall statement:

-          I really like the idea of using time as a factor within a board game. It would keep the game play exciting and unpredictable depending on how fast you can respond to changes/rules/ or movements.

Bibliography:

- Impact Zone the board game