Metro Madness - Process

Initial Ideas

NYC Subway Map = the board
6 sided dice, placement markers, location cards, flags (?) / pegs (?), dry erase markers
Drawing inspiration from different board games:
- Monopoly
- Ticket to Ride
Objective: Figure out ways to get from one place to the other; first player to reach all 3 locations wins
Build and 'conquer' your routes on the map to gain faster access to destinations
- To build your route, you can only move forward by half the number you rolled
- Once you have a complete route/track to and from your destinations, you own that station.
Penalties: When going through another player's station, you must stop and pay a fine

1. First Generation:

Each player starts with a home, school and park card and their goal is to reach all of them, possibly before the other players. The primary purpose of this prototype was to test the initial mechanics that we had designed.
Questions raised:
- Can you win the game by claiming a route?
- What prevents you from ignoring a destination that is hard to get to?
- What are the consequences for not reaching/claiming your destinations?

2. Prototype Testing:

Group testing/ Peer review session
Suggestions: "It might be helpful to add a strategic element, mechanic, or interaction that really emphasizes each stop."
- Players found themselves only fixated on the station they started on and where they needed to go.
- Many of the subway stops in between were ignored.
- One of the objectives of the game is for players to learn and familiarize themselves with the subway, but we have no emphasis on each stop.

3. Second Generation:

Each player
Changes:
- Scrapped the Home, School, Park idea and just draw 3 random destinations instead.
- Point systems to emphasize endogenous value
Conquering
- Why are we conquering? Possibly scrapping this idea due to loss of purpose of game.
- Is this fun/pleasurable for the players?
Stations/Lines
- Are we still trying to own or use stations to our own advantage?
Money/Metrocard?
- Each player has a student metro card that serves three stops at every turn and 10 single fare cards that can be used to build routes.
How can we create a game that emphasizes the same values of real life features? We want to transfer the knowledge of using express trains, local stops, and multiple transfer stations in real life to the game and visa versa.

4. EXTREME DISILLUSIONMENT WITH OUR GAME

5. Complete Rehaul:

We decided to abandon our "conquering" goal but to maintain our mechanics of movement around the board. With this decision we were able to open up the narrative of the game to new possibilities.

MetroMadness-Bars

Destination cards

We looked up bars (we liked) around Manhattan that were evenly distributed and marked their addresses, the subway lines they were on and the closest station to the bar.

MetroMadness-Chance Cards

Preliminary Chance Cards

Brainstorming ideas for chance cards that could be beneficial to the player who drew them, could be detrimental to the player who drew them, or could be used against another player to hurt them or benefit the player who drew the card.