Week 11: Competitive Play

In class, we began prepping for our final board game assignment. On Tuesday, we played Disney's Haunted Mansion board game for inspiration. It was fun to think about the perspective of the designers. A lot went into the game to make it engaging and entertaining. Each player could collect "ghost" cards during their turn. Each player had three actions and could choose from a list (collect, duel, move, etc.) The players could also collect "haunt" cards, although the goal is to collect the most ghost cards and have the least haunt cards. At first glance, it seemed that many rules would be difficult to follow, but once we played each step, everything began to fall into place. It will be interesting to see how we can include multiple elements to our board game design and still have a fun, easy-flowing game.  In our reading for this week, Critical Play: Radical Game Design, Flanagan says, "Early game boards remain important to critical designers not only because they reflect cultural notions of a given time but also because their play patterns continue to influence contemporary design." This is excellent advice for my team just starting to brainstorm ideas for our board game. It will be essential to keep all of our drafts and ideas so that when we are finalizing the project, we can see the original goal vs. what the final goal is.  Dr. S had us review his "game store" of different artistic cartridges for our board game ideas. We must create a game based on the design of a cartridge. For my brainstorming idea, I chose one that displayed a mountain with a gem glowing on the peak. My original idea was to have different mountain climbing levels and uncover resources to help the player reach the peak. The ultimate goal of my design is to reach the top of the mountain and uncover the hidden gem. The player who completes this first wins. There will definitely have to be more planning and design if we continue this idea. For now, the rest of my team will develop their ideas, and we will all figure out which can best execute them.  I am excited to see how our game-designing process plays out. I've seen what the classes in the past years have done, and I am inspired to create a visually appealing and entertaining board game.