Board Game – Term 01
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Board Game – Term 01

Posted by on Feb 25, 2012 in Life at VFS | 12 comments

Hey guys! Term 01 is finally over and now we are having 4 days of school break until next Monday. As I already said some posts before, one of our final projects for Term 01 – and by the way one of the most important on this term – was the Board Game for Game Theory (Analog) Class. So here I am to present how was each one of the steps to finally have the final game in hands. 😀 First of all, I need to thanks and congrats my friend Mustafa Dungarpurwala who did the game with me as a team.

In the beginning of the first month in Game Theory (Analog) Class, we received an assignment which we were supposed to create 25 to 50 Board Game ideas. This assignment was great to show to us what was our experience with board games. Mustafa and I decided to take all of our ideas together and between almost 100 different concepts we tried to find the one which received the best feedback from Gregory MacMartin, our teacher. The funniest part was how we transformed a simple game concept into an intelligent and unique one. From a thief who should escape a police officer who walks in the board every two rounds, to recover the stolen money, into a adventure game with Dragons and Magics. And this is how Dragon’s Burrow was born.

Dragon’s Burrow
The background story of Dragon’s Burrow is about win the right to have the love of the princess. To be worthy to marry Princess Celina, The King of Armana has thrown a challenge to the four different contestants: Elf, Orc, Gnome and Human. The one who gets the maximum number of eggs from the Dragon’s Burrow wins the challenge. But the big question is: The Dragon will let them do that?

From the first concept to the last one, we had a lot of changes to turn the gameplay more interesting. When we are developing a board game, the most important thing is the feedback from the players. We will only be able to make the game better if we receive and accept opinions by others. In our class it was required at least 5 playtests with different people.

Basically our gameplay works as follows: In a total of five players, each one must choose one of five races – Orc, Elf, Gnome, Human and Dragon – to play. The criterion of choice of the order follows the answer to the question: “Who ate eggs recently?”. The player who has recently eaten eggs is the first to choose a race and play the game. And for the others following clockwise sequence order.

The four adventures has the objective to capture as many eggs that they can, and bring it back to their respective hideouts. While, the objective of the Dragon is to defend her eggs to be captured, killing the adventurers. If an adventurer with an egg on his hands is killed, the Dragon needs to get the egg and drop it back in one of the nests in the second floor. Saving the captured egg will add a score to the Dragon. When Dragon reaches 4 scores the game ends and she wins. But if adventurers captures more eggs, before the Dragon save it again, the adventurers wins according to the number of eggs they have in their hideout.

We decided to give one Specific Racial Ability for each Race in the game. The hardest part was to balance everything. Also, in addition to the Racial Ability, adventurers can chose one of the three Special Skills that they can use during the game.

For the movement, we decided to use a different method to move the players around the board. We did not want to use dices, then we create Movement Cards following the pattern of the game Tetris. Players need to use a card and walk according to the certain number of tiles available, and following exactly the same direction of the cards. In the beginning of player’s turn, they need to draw a new card, being able to chose one card of three. They also have the option to discard a single card to move just one tile in the board.

And finally, we decided to add Treasure Cards to give to players some kind of good rewards and, sometimes, bad events. And also some tunnels that able players to cross from one side to the other of the board.

First Prototype
The game started with a very simple concept in which players walk around the board on a single floor. Upon leaving the bridge where they began their match, players had to go ahead, grab the egg and return to their hideout.

In our first match, the game was tested on a paper prototype. The cards were not yet very well balanced and the fact we only have a single floor in the game, made ​​the Dragon had an incredible advantage against the adventurers.

Second Prototype
After some playtests with our friends at school, me and Mustafa were searching for some solution to balance the Dragon strength. And then a great idea appeared in our heads. What if we create two different floors, with different kinds of access? This way, and adding some blocked stones in the board, we could manage very well the distance between Dragon and Adventurers, making the game very well balanced. For our second prototype, we also used paper, but now with more details and the second floor option.

More playtests, and we still needed to balance the gameplay in some aspects. Players who were playing as the Adventurers were not satisfied with the fact that when the Dragon capture and save an egg again, the players had no more chance to capture it again. From that point we decided that when the Dragon adds one more point to her score, the egg does not disappear from the board. Thus, adventurous can try to catch it again, provided they can steal all the eggs before the Dragon complete four of them.

Third Prototype
Almost the same as the final design of the game, the third prototype we created in paper too, but now with colours, cool images and cards. In this last prototype we solved a lot of mistakes that we were having before. Other interesting things we added were the features of the pieces of the game itself. We bought magnetic pins that could represent each race of the game. While the eggs were magnet too, when the player approaches the egg, your character will automatically stick to the magnetic egg. This way players can control only the pin as it moves across the board, carrying the Dragon egg too.

* The whole art of the game was made through the combinations of images found on Google. Although we have edited and changed all the illustrations, we do not have the copyrights of the images. This is a nonprofit project containing images and references taken from Google.

With our third prototype we and our friends presented the games in class, in one of the last weeks of Term 01. And after that, finally creating the final version of the Board Game, with the Rule Book and Playtesting Reports.

Board Game Presentations
We had a full afternoon of presentations that began at 4h00pm and ended at 10h00pm. During the presentations, the teacher evaluated mostly the game concepts, game mechanics, gameplay, design, and finally if the games fit in Garneau’s Forms of Fun, and in which classifications of Roger Caillois the games were also present.

Between the 14 forms of classifiable fun, Dragon’s Burrow embody mostly the Immersion, Intellectual Problem Solving, Competition, Social Interaction and Advancement. These forms can be combined perfectly in game. Also, talking about  Roger Caillois Analysis, he would classify our board game as a mix of Alea and Agon.

Omar Gonzalez presenting his game Hadrium Sector

The presentations were very well and I confess that I felt good when I was presenting the game to the rest of the class this time. I believe that Mustafa also felt comfortable. :)

Playtesting Reports
As I already said above, we went through five different playtests to get the results we had.From this we created a document to present this evolution and the feedback received. After the presentation in class with our game prototype, we received a lot of good feedbacks also. Between all student’s tips, we decided to create a kind of co-op gameplay between players, in which they can protect themselves against the dragon, creating a range of defense. The problem was the Dragon was already balanced in the last time that we’ve play tested. Adding the co-op gameplay the Dragon started to be too weak, so we decided to focus in the old gameplay and just make the rules even more balanced and specific.

During all the process of development of our game we passed through various different board layouts. We finally decided to have a two floor board when we noticed that this way we could create a better design for the game and also use it in our favor, by manipulating the balance of the game between the floors. From a very simple map, we did a better one with cool colors, textures, props and conditions. All cards and pins were updated too, to create the best design.

Final Version
And finally, we made the final version of the game, printing the image on a board. Next to VFS there is a store that does these printing on the board. Almost all students of the course chosen by their service. For the final delivery we did the Rule Book and Playtest Document. We put everything in a box, along with the pins and the cards and we delivered to the teacher.

The most interesting part of this whole project is to analyze how much we have learned during these two months. From very simple rules, we have transformed and reached most intelligent and balanced rules. I did not expect to make something so interesting in so little time. And again the school surprised me in the right direction.

That’s all folks! I’m trying to figure out some way to post all I have in mind. But as always, time is short. I’ll try harder. Thanks!

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