Board game evaluation

Evaluation of the Board Game

For our board game we decided that instead of creating a board based around one game IP we decided that it would be a challenge but we really liked the idea of having multiple game IP’s in one board game.

We decided on creating a multi-IP board game with each game having 2 27x27cm squares on the board. As there were four of us in the group we each did a game IP of our choosing. I chose to do need for Speed based on the fact that it’s a very competitive game and also because I could include many different aspects of the video game into the board game.

In order to create the board game we needed to decide a couple of this before we physically started making it. The main thing we needed to understand and come to terms with was how the game played. We decided to go with a simple first to the finish game with 2-4 laps depending on the amount of players.

The game will be playable by 2-4 players at a time, the amount of players determines how long the game plays for, if there are 4 players then only 2 laps of the board have to be completed however if there are any less than the amount of laps needed to win the game will change accordingly.

As we were planning the board game we wanted something to set ours away from everyone else’s, we thought of what exactly could be done to really make it unique and exciting and came up with an idea to make the board game 3D. Now I know what you’re saying, how is that going to fit in a box? What’s going to be 3D about it? We thought about how exactly we could create it three dimensional and figured that if the board game folded in a certain way then we could have it as a box that contained all of the 3D pieces. For my part of the board game I created some three dimensional buildings and also a small bridge that could fold up onto one of the buildings and fold into the box neatly.

Another unique selling point to our game is the simple fact of it being more than one game in one, personally I haven’t really seen many board games that combine 4 different game IP’s into one simple board game.

The board game is also suitable for young ages, however the complexity of the game may be a little confusing for younger children. If I were to rate this game, I would give it a 7+ PEGI rating simply based on the fact that there are many different elements to the game and any younger than 7+ player may become confused as to how to play the game.

In our board game there are three types of cards, there are creature cards; these cards are drawn when a player lands on a creature card tile on the board, these cards can benefit all players for example one of the cards could be that all players move 1 space. Random draw cards consist of action and consequence cards these are shuffled at the start of the game and drawn from the top when players land on a random draw card. Action cards allows the player to possibly do something to their position on the board for example a speed boost could move them 2 spaces along the board. Consequence cards however do the opposite, these cards can effect a player in a negative way possibly making them miss a turn or move back spaces.

Overall I think the creation of the board game was fairly easy, everyone in the group was given their own section that had to have at least one 3D aspect to it, the sections had to be easy to navigate and visually appealing. I think that our board game had a very strong link towards what our game IP’s were (Mario, Pokemon, Need for Speed and World of Warcraft).

Time management for this project was done very well in our group I think, we were organised, time efficient and also had the project set up and ready to go once it came to testing them.

If I were to do this project again personally I think that having more time to create better visual assets would be better as we had to come up with different ways to allow us to create the 3D assets for each section.