4 weeks. 1 mission. To create a board game like none other.
Let's split it down shall we.
Week 1 - Research.
Week 2 - Game Ideas.
Week 3 - Development and Processing.
Week 4 - Finalisation.
Week 1
This week’s focus was all about the research. Monday, our first official day on the project we all got to have a bit of fun and play a few board games! This way we were able to play test a few different ones. Find out what we found fun and what wasn't. What ones appealed to our age group and not and exactly what a board game actually entails. 'Blokus' was the first pick from the box. At first we played this completely wrong. Not to our own fault though! The instructions on the box were not exactly clear on what the game actually entailed. After having to be told by someone who has already played this game how to do it we came to the conclusion that instructions do need to be obvious and a couple of lines on the box won't do, even if the game is simple (something we are not ;) and we still didn't figure it out so for a younger audience this wouldn't of been acceptable). After a couple of others, we set out in groups to wander the town and do a bit of Primary research around a few shops. Finding out what sells well, what is on the actual market and so on and so forth.Tuesday we split up main categories and subjects all to do with board games to share between us all so we could go and research our designated areas. This allowed us to find out more in a shorter space of time. I was assigned the topic of "What makes a good/bad board game?”
So we all went home and decided to all meet up each day to pull our research together.
I started with the library. Sifting through an assortment of books I found nothing of great use whatsoever. The other groups had already got their claws in on the good ones! So I was left with the internet and general common sense. I surfed around for a good while picking websites to bits and came up with a few extremely useful sites;
From there I created a document of notes on what to include in a board game, things to avoid and what makes it enjoyable for the player.
This was then collaborated with the rest of the research.
Friday afternoon. This was when we came up with the concept of a Mario Kart board game. Ready to start the Game Ideas the following week...
