GD: Print and Play, Now Print and Playable!

Now you too can experience the joy, the wonder, the sheer back-stabbery of Digsite Heist! Download it here:

right here!

3D: Fishing Village Level Greyboxing

Hey! So I haven't posted in a while (we're still doing a lot of iterations on our boardgames, a lot of playtesting and working out kinks) so I thought I'd post some work from my other class, 3D Animation! We're all working together to make individual levels that reflect a concept, and the one for our class is that of a Chinese-styled fishing village in the mountains. We model everything modularly and throw it together in UDK to create constructs and go from there.
To start off with, we did a lot of architectural buildings, so our levels look a bit sparse. Here are some screenshots of the block outs I made using my modular kit:

Obviously I'm going to have to tweak around some things and throw in some props, but that's what we're working on now! I'll post those up once I'm done.

GD: Post-Playtest Blogging

The author and two friends playtesting Digsite Raid!

 Now that I've got the basic rules down for my game, it's time to playtest it. Playtesting is super important, as Jesse Schell says in his book on game design-- good games are made through playtesting and playtesting alone. Though it's painful, he admits, it's extremely important, like stepping back from a painting to realise you've got all the shadows wrong. So I needed to playtest my game, and badly. 7 o'clock on a Saturday evening, a night which on any other college campus would find me out on the town, met me in the Student Smart Room in Goldstein furiously rolling dice and taking notes as my friends and peers utterly destroyed my game.

Now, as my game is fairly derivative of a lot of other board games, I didn't have as many immediate teething problems as other games might have. The main problem for me was balancing-- were the Event Cards too annoying, did each player get enough Item Cards, were there enough opportunities to trigger the Combat mechanic? Were players frustrated too much, or not enough? Did players seem engaged enough to want to be competitive? These questions were the main ones I had in mind as I set out to playtest.

Event cards in particular were quite a thorn in my side-- either they were far too easy on the player, or the entire group was ruing even stepping on the second two layers. I have to come up with a balance of nice and bad cards, factoring in giving the player a sense of agency in the whole ordeal. So more 'choose a player' rather than 'go directly to,' if that makes sense.

Item Cards weren't that big of an issue, but it was suggested that I give them more of a sense of value by limiting their original number so people would have to work for them. This could also add more drama to the Theif Event Cards, as it gives a chance for players to rob others of their more hard-won Items.

Combat was kind of a huge issue-- no one wanted to use it! Or, rather, people were so engrossed in getting the items and avoiding event cards that they didn't want to attack people, or didn't have the opportunity to. Modding the Combat mechanic to allow for more ambushes could be a lot more fun, and add more agency to the gameplay. A suggested tweak could be that by passing a player you could challenge them, rather than directly landing on a same square. That way, you could attack people just leaving the Artifact tent and steal their items.

On the subject of Artifacts, though, the scores really need to be increased. Way too many people were just getting them like it was no big deal.

Another way to force combat, a friend suggested, was to make the final exit place have a chance roll as well, to let other people catch up and ambush them. I may also integrate this idea.

All in all, my game suffered from a complete lack of skill and a high dependency on chance. I'll definitely need to tweak some things to make it seem like the player has more agency.

GD: Board Game Rules

Digsite Raid!

In this game of digsites and landslides, grab fame and glory for yourself and sabotage your opponents!

A game by Justine Hamer

Up to 4 players, approx. 30 minutes

You are an archaeology student stuck in college hell, weighed down with loans and stuck with menial tasks like dusting down tiny old fragments of who knows what. You know fame and fortune await you if you can get just one big artifact into a museum, but how can you get one? 

There’s a hole in the fence at main archaeological digsite, and sneaking in could be so easy… But you’re not the only one with that idea! Make it to the artifact tent, steal priceless historical items, and get out of there before someone else beats you to it!

Game Components

You will need:

- One board 

- A set of Item Cards

- A set of Event Cards

- Four player tokens

- Four Archaeologist IDs

- Five Artifacts (Cuneiform, Urn, Skull, Votive, Coin)

- One dice

For the board, print out both pieces and glue them together with the tab provided.

Setting up the game

To set up the game, glue the board together, set the IDs in the ID tent, and the Artifacts within the Artifact tent.

They go in this order:

1. Cuneiform

2. Urn

3. Skull

4. Votive

5. Coin

Roll the dice to determine order of play. The highest number goes first, as they made their sneak check. Proceed counter-clockwise from this player. Separate the Item Cards and Events Cards, shuffle their decks, and deal each player eight Item Cards.

How to Play

Player one begins by rolling the dice and then moving forward. You may go around whichever side of the digsite you please, but you cannot go backwards and you must use your entire roll to move forward (i.e., no ‘dividing rolls.’) When you land on a square with an order, do as it says. 

The ladders act as a slide between layers, but they cannot be landed on. If you have a ladder Item Card and you land on a square with notches in it, you may use the ladder Item Card to go down a level onto the adjacent square. It can also be used to create a shortcut from either the Jail or the Hospital to the lower level.

If you land on the same square as an opponent, you may choose to initiate Combat. See the Combat tab for more information about this.

If you land on a darker square, take an Event Card. Event cards can apply to you, to an opponent, or to both, depending on what it says. Follow the instructions on the Event Card and then discard it.

Buildings

There are two main buildings on this map, the Jail and the Hospital. Landing on them normally will not affect you, but being sent to them will. If you are sent to the Hospital, you lose one turn but are allowed to leave after that. If you are sent to Jail, you must roll a 4 or higher or use a Fedora disguise Item Card to escape. If you have a ladder, you may use the ladder shortcut out the backdoor of either building.

Combat

When you land on the same square as your opponent, you have the chance to challenge them to combat. Combat is easy: select whatever number of weapon Item Cards you have in your hand and lay them facedown in front of you. Your opponent should do the same. At the same time as each other, turn over your cards and compare your attack scores. The one with the highest score wins. 

The loser forfeits their cards, whatever Artifacts they have on them, and their Archaeologist IDs if they have them. They also have to pay a visit to the Hospital, and miss a turn. The winner gets to keep whatever Artifacts the loser had on them, but not the Archaeologist ID.

Artifacts and Archaeologist IDs

On the ground level of the digsite, there are two tents. One contains the Artifacts, the other the Archaeologist IDs. Both are needed to win the game. 

Enter these tents by using the marked out entrance area, following the arrows. When you are in these entranceways and tents, you do not pick up an Event Card and you cannot initiate combat.

If you land on one of the numbers adjacent to an artifact, you may make an attempt to steal it. To steal an artifact, you use your burglary Item Cards. You add up the score of all of your burglary Item Cards and add that to your roll as you try to beat the scores of the Artifact. In this effect, each Artifact has a score, as follows:

Cuneiform: 9

Urn: 11

Skull: 13

Votive: 15

Coin: 17

If you beat these scores, you are allowed to take the Artifact and escape via the roped-off exit of the tent. You are allowed to stay by the Artifact as long as you like, but can only make one attempt per turn.

To get an Archaeologist ID, enter the tent via it’s demarked entranceway. As it is with the Artifact tent and entranceway, you are not allowed to fight in these areas. As soon as you are able to enter the main body of the tent, you are allowed to start rolling to get an ID. You must roll a 6 to get an ID, and once you get it you may leave the tent via the roped-off exit.

Winning

To win the game, all you need to do is gather an Artifact and leave via the cave. A particularly unobservant guard guards the cave, but he won’t let you pass unless you show an Archaeologist ID. So, to win, escape past this guard with as many Artifacts as possible. You can either count the first person to cross the exit line as the winner, or the person who escapes with the most Artifacts.

GD: Board Game Brainstorming Part 2: Theme

So now that we have an idea, we have to solidify it and bring it all together with a theme.

So what kind of theme should we have?

If we're choosing the archaeological excavation board game, then the theme should be pretty simple: archaeology. But that by itself isn't that interesting, isn't it? (well, ok, it's interesting to me. But we have to make it interesting to a lot of people!) So what about archaeology and breaking into an archaeological dig site is interesting?

Let's ask Steven Spielberg.

Heck, let's just make an Indiana Jones board game and get it over with! Sneaking into temples, trouncing evil Nazis, "that thing belongs in a museum," and getting the girl, well, what else could you want from an archaeology-themed game? It's got thrills, chills, and morally depraved opponents, so it should make the perfect game for anyone.
But that's still not enough! Indiana Jones is just one person, and this game needs to be multiplayer. There isn't room enough for more than one Indie in the world, let alone a small board. But what if this was a game of egos, pitting presumed Indie against presumed Indie? A lot of temple-robbing, tomb-scavenging films feature other treasure hunters acting as opposing forces to the main fellow, so why not integrate this into our game? Each player starts off thinking they're the swashbuckling protagonist and everyone else doesn't deserve the fame and glory of rescuing priceless items from the hands of the enemy, and acts accordingly.

So, for a concept statement, how about this?

In this game of tombs and temples, grab fame and glory for yourself whilst sabotaging your opponents!

Or, better yet,

Your personal progression is sped up by hampering others'.

I want to make this an extremely competitive game, with lots of opportunities for sabotage and outright confrontation. A lot of the mechanics will serve to send your opponents back, or stop them in their tracks, or even make them lose their place entirely! The board itself should have room for adaptation and change as each card is played, and the layout should be reasonably mutable to suit the player's whims. There should be a combat mechanic and serious consequences to losing. All in all, this game should be annoying as all get out, and super cathartic if you don't like the person you're playing against.

Let's get a feel for the aesthetics theme as well. The best place to start is with your traditional pulp-fiction-y movie posters. Take these, for instance:

Can you see a general visual theme?  There's a lot of papery, old textures that reference the posters of 1930s treasure hunter films. The fonts are, for the most part, bombastic and overly dramatic to emphasize the romantic nature of treasure hunting. The colour scheme is a whole lot of warm, dusty tones to bring to mind exotic places with hidden reliquaries and deadly temples.
This carries on into the films themselves, which primarially have a lot of earthy tones.

We can solidify our archaeological theme by mimicking these colour schemes. A particular theme that works could be this:

GD: Board Game Brainstorm

After all that intense soul-searching analysis, now it's time to brainstorm! I haven't played that many board games (or games at all) but I have a few favourites I tend to return to when I'm at home.

Games I've enjoyed (or, rather, my family enjoys):

Outrage! Steal the Crown Jewels:
My brother was a particular fan of this board game because it was competitive and belligerent with serious conflicts but didn't drag on like Risk or Monopoly. The basic essence is break into the Tower of London and steal the Crown Jewels from the White Palace using tools you pick up along the way. It has a very basic combat system using weapon cards with numeric values, but you can also improvise by using the tools you brought with you to steal the Crown Jewels. It has a lot of English history built into it as well, which gives it an air of realism that makes it more serious. The only problem was that you could find yourself playing it for two or three hours: if it were shorter, it would be much more fun.

Cranium:
I'm not sure how we got this game, but it's the only game my family can all agree on. It mixes charades, pictionary, number games, and general knowledge into a game that's varied enough to interest anyone. That way, your team can plan on exploiting their strengths to move forward and hinder the other teams. It's a pretty long board game, though, and a lot of the charade prompts are out of date. It could do with a revamp.

Bananagrams:
Not exactly a board game, but it's certainly a bored game (haha). My mother and I play this all the time when I'm at home, as it's a bit like DIY Scrabble. I like the timed aspect of it, as everyone's rushing themselves against the other player, but I always feel like it could be a lot more organised. My sister never really liked it because she could never get the words right, so maybe there should be a Bananagrams for the word-challenged?

Ideas for games:

Bananagrams but mixed with Bioshock pipe game
Given a 6x6 grid and 10 tabs of straight or curved pipe tabs to start off with and you have to get from the source to the depository. As you finish one line, you have to take another tab with a pipe on it and integrate it into your layout.
I tested this one out and it works to a degree, but I'm not sure how fun it is. I think I'd need to add different shapes of pipes, or maybe make the whole thing a different shape?

Psychological benefits/detriments developmental game
Psychosocial or psychosexual? Withdrawn or outgoing? Dependant or independant, trusting or suspicious? In this game of chance and inflicted pain and suffering, who will make it through the developmental stages to adulthood with minimal damage? Probably a rather complicated board, as you make moral choices based on psychiatric tests, and these choices dictate which dark path you go down.

Adjective/verb/noun charades game
Pick an adjective card, a verb card, and a noun, and act it out entirely without saying it.

Dante's Inferno narrative board game with concentric circles of Hell
Roll a 5 to summon Geryon!

Board game with board shaped like motherboard (players as bytes?)
Pick up an information card and make it back to your microprocessor before the others do!

Darwinism: The Reckoning (evolve by picking up certain biological traits)
Pick up biological traits and then someone pulls a card that states the style of the next epoch and then either your creature survives or it doesn't. Very much a game of chance.

Moebius Strip-shaped board, maybe based on reincarnation

Papercraft catapults assault on a papercraft castle

Archaeology-themed board game
not unlike Outrage!; acquire important parts and leave for the museum with your name on them for fame and glory. Shaped like an archaeological dig, with landslides and cave collapses.

Robot building workshop

2D Sidescroller-themed game, reminiscent of Mario or similar platformers

Cake shop themed game, get ingredients and head back to the kitchen before the others

Pokemon-themed battle system that's more like the video game (turn based, with dice)

Art History revision game to help study for Development of Art and Ideas

Racing game with personalised cars with specific stats (power, turning, durability, tires, engine)

Pirate-themed game with a continuous board and hidden treasures, gathering resources and taking down opponents

Titans vs Humans, a game of slow attrition and patience
Build a wall, break it down. Build it higher, break it down again.

Deliver the mail! fighting obstacles like dogs, trees, government shut down, and tornadoes

3D construction game, building bridges to cross rivers, very popular with engineers

What if the board looked like a public transportation map and you're trying not to crash trains?