Help Me Design a Board Game — Part 8
Big step forward since my last update.
Here is what I accomplished:
- I have a draft design of the main gameboard.
- I further simplified some of the game mechanics.
- I wrote the instructions — and achieved my objective of making them "read as you play".
Need to catch up with Parts 1 to 7 — find them here.
Gameboard Path
Here is the latest design.
- It uses a snake path and I horizontally aligned the blue phases of life.
- Many of the spaces are repeated multiple times, so to save space and make the gameboard less cluttered, I'm using a legend on the left side of the board that has icons and text descriptions. This saves me from having to repeat the text on every space. Whether this is a good gameplay decision or not remains to be seen.
- Some of the spaces have text that identifies some special action that needs to be taken at that time.
Here are the previous iterations that I tried.
Full Gameboard
Here is the full gameboard with all of the main components.
- I used to have a board with containers for tracking Health, Job, and Education XP. I simplified this by combining Education and Job XP into one metric named Skill. The premise here is that education and on-the-job experience both contribute to increasing your skill, which in turns provides you with career advancement. This saves us from having to struggle with explaining what education means — is it a diploma, degree, apprenticeship, personal learning, etc. — it could be a mix of all of these things and there is no value in getting stuck in the weeds with this for a board game.
- As a container for Skill I'm now having players place their tokens on top of the INCOME (job) card.
- I now have containers for the INCOME cards and NUTRITION & HOUSING cards, whereas before they were to be placed loosely near the gameboard. (In earlier versions I had exlored the idea of placing the cards in stands). With the simplified gameboard, I have more space to work with and since these cards have tokens on them, providing containers makes sense.
- I eliminated the HEALTH container as we will now have players immediately assign their health points (tokens) to one of the other containers — Lifestyle, Relationships, or Skill. Previously, they could save up their HEALTH points (tokens) and apply them in the future.
- I simplified the SAVINGS board by removing the BANK container since holding money in the bank is similar to holding it in a low risk investment, so now we have 3 continers instead of 4 for SAVINGS. I also stacked the containers from low to high risk.
- The one LOANS container is now three containers where each container designates a specific amount of loan principal — $10,000, $50,000, $100,000. This allows players to take out larger loans without having to track far too many tokens. I may replace this with different sized tokens, to be determined.
- We have to find a spot on the gameboard for the EVENT cards since they are drawn frequently. All other decks can be set aside until they are needed.
- Players will hold a few cards — Character card (which has their goals), Life Partner and Children cards, and any SHOP items they buy, including commute options like an automobile.
Instructions
- In order to properly test the game, I felt I had to write out the instructions. It took me several hours, but mission accomplished.
- As I noted in previous updates, the more depth a game has, typically the more rules and instructions that are needed. This makes it harder to start and play the game because players have to read a lot of text and remember a lot of rules. To minimize this problem, I wrote the instructions in a way that players only have to read a little bit and then immediately start playing. Then as the pawn lands on a space, they can read the instructions for that space. Once they have played each unique space once, they will have a good sense of how the game plays and will only need to refer to the instructions occasionally to clarify or remember a rule.
- As a reminder, the current design has all players playing every turn. So the instructions have each player facilitating the actions on the turn. For example, when player A moves the pawn to the Event space, that player reads the instructions out loud for all players to hear and then draws the Event card for all players to play.
- The instructions are currently 6 pages, but that's full width text and no images, so when they are properly designed, they will likely be double that. This includes explanations of personal finance concepts so that players learn key terms and decision points as they read the instructions.
Card Decks
Here is a list of the card decks in the game. This is more than I typically would want in a game. But it's necessary in this game and I think I can make it manageable.
- CHARACTER
- HOUSING & NUTRITION
- INCOME
- ECONOMY
- EVENT
- SHOPPING
- FAMILY
Next Steps
I have to design a few cards for each deck as this will allow me to actually play the game somewhat properly. I'm feeling good that I have all the main educational concepts captured well. What I don't yet know is how much work I need to do to make the gameplay engaging.
Share Your Thoughts
Post comments in our Teaching Superhero Community
Am I on track?
Am I missing something?
Do you have any suggestions?
Should I keep posting about this game?
PS: Please only share ideas if you are willing to allow me or anyone following this discussion to use them for free without any obligation. If you contribute an idea that has a significant influence on the design of my game, I will be pleased to gift you a copy of the game.
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I'm Mathew Georghiou and I write about how games are transforming education and learning. I also share my experience as an entrepreneur inventing products and designing educational resources used by millions around the world. More about me at Georghiou.com