5. Game ♠ Play

Instructions:

♠ Invent or reinvent a computer-free game or sport, for a minimum of 2 people.

♦ Played in the same room, area or space.

♥ Type of games to design: board, card, ball, dice.

♣ Work in groups / teams of 4.

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Previous experience in creating my own games which derived from the board game concept.

First year graphic design project at UEL (2011):

Board game project at college (2008)

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After choosing the group (consisting of myself, Destina, Lauren and Natasha), and brainstorming all the games we could think of to hand. We then decided as a group we were going to create a board game as we all enjoy playing them, and also have previous experience in either the making or designing of a board game before.

After we had a brief idea of using the theme of Alice in Wonderland, I did some rough sketches of ideas away from this theme that we could base a game around. By going off the initial theme of the game I wanted to show the group other paths we could go down in regards to an idea, than to just follow the main one through.

Below are the rough sketches of other potential game ideas:

Guess Who (using willing students from both the Monday and Tuesday group).
Top Trumps (using willing students from both the Monday and Tuesday group, that focusses on design abilities).
Build a font styled game.

After putting these to the group, we all agreed to carry on with the Alice in Wonderland theme, and have fun making the game using the surrealist style that the film/book depicts. We decided we didn't want to make the game too serious, as when it comes down to it, games are meant to be played to have fun, so thats what we intend to do.

A few trailers from the many adaptations of the Lewis Carroll book:

My favourite adaptation, Hallmark's 1999 version featuring Gene Wilder:

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I then sketched a few ideas of how we could approach our idea using the theme:

The first idea was based on a product my work sells, which are wooden plaques. I had the idea of having the game being designed onto a block of wood to represent the element of the film in which Alice falls down the rabbit hole into Wonderland.

The next sketches were based on the board game idea we eventually decided we were going to finally use.

Natasha had the idea of combining the idea of croquet with the concept of a board game. At first I thought this idea was a bit surreal by combining an element from the film with the board game, its also an outdoor game, so to combine this with an indoor board game, had me somewhat confused at first. However I realised that the film/book are very surreal and therefore began sketches on how to incorporate the element of croquet with a board game concept.

I did question using this concept at first as I just didn't know how we were going to be able to incorporate it successfully into the game. The only idea I had was to create a separate croquet part, that worked alongside the board game.

We then each decided that for the end of the first week that we would design a board game each based on our ideas, to then show each other before Tuesday's lesson. We would then talk through our individual ideas and decide what the next steps in the approach to the project were going to be.

This is the rough design we were each going to work with for our individual designs, in which the rectangles would be replaced with playing cards, the circles replaced with rabbit holes, and the centre part will be where the croquet game will be played.

These are our individual designs we made for the board game, Laurens design:

Destina's design:

My design:

Being a big fan of Alice in Wonderland, made it slightly easy for me to design my initial concept. From my research after watching both the Disney and Tim Burton version I created my design. It has a cartoon style with a few twists like the Tim Burton film, these twists inclue the instruction cards and the scary looking rabbit holes.

My design from Natasha's sketch of having a swirl in the centre part to play croquet on:

We then decided we were going to take individual elements of everyones designs to then place into a newly designed board game idea.

The aim of the game is to get around the board first. The game can be played with 2-4 players, however 4 is a more ideal number. You then have to take it in turns to hit the ball through one of the wickets in the central part of the board, however you only get one chance each at a time.
Once the ball has been hit through one of the wickets, can they then continue to roll the die, whichever number is then rolled, will correspond to the amount of moves to take on the board.
If a player reaches a rabbit hole on the board, they must then miss a go and wait their next turn. The board has a range of plain playing cards, as well as a few with instructions to then follow to complete the game, this is to make the game more fun than to just have a plain boring design.

The components for the game include a die, as well as 4 flamingo-like mallets, like the film:

Counters for each player, which are handmade vials filled with coloured glitter, taking inspiration from the 'drink me' bottle scene from the film/book:

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The process of designing the final game:

The final board game sent to print before assembly:

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Lauren then made the instructions to go alongside the game:

As we didn't have enough time to make a fully furnished box as well, I decided to take it upon myself to make up a small prototype of how our box would be. The dimensions of the final game are 600mm x 600mm with a box that would be of 300mm x 600mm.

The prototype dimensions are:

Length: 142mm

Width: 73mm

Depth: 30mm