Crazy Taxi Boardgame (Design Exercise)

Arcade chaos, real life tactility

Kate experimented with a few forms of movement before quickly settling on flicking the taxi cab. It provided just enough control of the cab while still being unpredictable. Once this was chosen the board had to be developed.  She designed the initial board layout so that no space had a direct line of sight to all locations, but each location had a direct line of sight to at least one other. Spaces were also differentiated by how many walls/obstacles were close to them, as players could bank shots off them to make it easier to land.

Testing was initially cone with a cobbled paper map  and various at home items. Once the initial board was found to have no major problems, it was moved to a more public setting and given walls,  as initial tests had found them necessary. While Kate was playtesting she looked for problem areas to be changed in the final board (namely the Eastern choke point between buildings) and made note of how many hits on average were made to get from one point to another.

These averages were used to determine the rewards players get by going from one point to another. Since she didn't have a computer to automatically determine rewards based on distance in the moment, Kate used this as an opportunity to experiment with every destination reward and make sure each one gave on average a similar amount of money per flicks. This also made players stay invested on harder routes, as if they did better than average they could get a much higher reward.

Minor rules were also experimented with during playtesting. Notably players being able to reposition their cars inside a loading zone was added as players would originally have less enthusiasm for delivering a client if it left them in a bad position.

After several layout adjustments, the final board was printed and obstacles fabricated. Final tests were run to verify that the switch to flat surfaces and Velcro attachment didn't notably impact gameplay.