Board Game Project

Today, we started out creating ideas of the board game. We used Trello to set out all of our ideas and started talking about what we wanted the game to roughly look like. We were going to have a base track and we started to trace the outline of the track which we will later print out and draw anything else we need after.

The game was roughly going to be a Mario styled racing where you'll be able to pick up cards as you progress around the track that could be good or bad, similar to abilities. The reason we went for a motorsport based game such as this is because we think motorsport is cool and we all agreed that it could be a good idea for a game, since there aren't many racing board games. Being in a game design course, partly basing it off of a game like Mario Kart is useful. The similarities is mostly the racing aspect, but also that there is kind of power-ups - being the chance cards.

Beginning to make things

Today, we started to make some parts of the game. I have started to make the cards for the game which I will design in Photoshop, print out, cut out, and stick the back to the front of one each. Chance cards are partly inspired by board games such as Monopoly. The board and rule book is also being worked on by other people in the team.

We are also going to be having a lap counter which is in the making at the moment. It'll just be a simple piece of paper that you'll move your counter around every time that you cross the start line. This will be useful to keep track of who is in the lead of the race

The rules booklet is shown here on the side. At the moment it is being made mostly by Sam in Google Slides, however we are all adding anything we think should be. We will print this out once finished and put all of the pages together to have the rules booklet.

Checkered Chance Speedsters Booklet

Completed Cards

I have completed all of the game cards that we planned on having for now. I will print and cut them out, before sticking the front to the back to make a fairly solid card. Later on, I could create more if we think there isn't enough, but between 2 and 4 people, it should be fine. I have doubled up the Speed Boost chance card since it isn't too crazy, but could help the flow of the game, and maybe help it to finish sooner.

The blue cards are just the basic ones that aren't too overpowered, but relatively balanced to give a player a slight edge over others. The gold ones are super chance cards which give a player quite a bit of an advantage over others, or just change the game quite a bit. The Safety Car card for example could be good and bad - bad if someone has a large lead but good if someone is far away and would've struggled to catch up. Finally, the red cards are there to punish a player. There is quite a few of these so this could make the game slightly frustrating, but will hopefully help to have a closer game.

The cards also now all have a description in the rules booklet so the players can identify what to do if what is said on the card isn't clear enough and they need an example to go with them. Below shows the original page, compared to the most recent. As you can see, it's been updated with hopefully all the information you will need to play the game, and looks far better which makes it nicer to read.

Sam has been doing a really good job on the rule booklet to make it look nice which should help our game stand out. We are trying to give most of the parts of the game a racing theme, so the backgrounds are usually images of vehicles on a race track, the cards are racing themed with checkered flags (also a reference to the team/game name). This really helps to immerse the players into the game.

Other Things we are Completing

We also now have a lap counter that TJ designed where we will get some tokens for each player that they will move every time they cross the start line. Each player will start with their extra counter on Lap 1, and shall move it to the next lap each time they cross the start line. The checkered flag pattern in the centre of the page is a good reminder of that since the start line is also a checkered flag. The lap counter also has a little side note for the players to know what lap is the final lap for the various player count. So, 2 players have lap 4 as the final lap, 3 players have lap 6 as the final lap, and 4 players have lap 8 as the final lap.

Xander has undergone the board's printing process. We've tried to print it on A4 and A3, but it still doesn't seem quite large enough so we are thinking that we'll either try print larger (A2, or A1 if needed) or print it across 4 pieces of A4 or A3 and stick them together. Either way, the board is mostly complete, and the main bit that we have to do next is getting the playing pieces made. We've already started doing some models, but what we have to remember is that it can't be too detailed for two reasons. One being that it is going to be incredibly small so the amount of detail on the print is going to be minimal anyway. And the second reason is that the 3D printer cannot print something if it doesn't have support. So a part such as a spoiler isn't possible since there's nothing to support the print.

Making the Board

We have decided on splitting the board across 4 A4 sheets of paper, where we will then put each piece next to each other on a large board of card. It should roughly be the size of A2, however, we may cut the top and bottom short since we haven't used all of that space.

We have now stuck the paper board onto the card base and it looks pretty good. We had to trim the edges since it got printed with an outline, but during this we accidentally cut off some of the board. It still doesn't look too bad though, and should be fine to play on.

Adding to the Game

We have added a fuel system to the game. I have printed out the Fuel Tracker which players will use to track their fuel. They will have two counters each, one of which will be on this board, and the other on the lap counter. We are thinking they are going to be little wheels with the inside being the colour of the player's car. The fuel tracker is used for keeping track of each player's fuel during the game. Every player begins on their car's max fuel capacity as they have max fuel, and as they go around the board, they have to roll a second dice which will determine if they lose a point of fuel. If it starts to get low, the player will have to consider pitting to refuel to 15, however they will lose a turn. However, losing a turn will be a lot better than losing all fuel and being out of the game.

Printing the Car Pieces

The car design is done and the 3D printing has started for them. We have printed them so they are 15mm long which is a good size to fit nicely into every square on the main board. The next pieces we will be printing will be little tyre counters which will be for he lap counter and fuel tracker.

Obviously for printing purposes, we couldn't put too much detail into the car design since it's being printed so small and they cannot have any overhanging pieces since that isn't possible to be printed. But they haven't come out so bad and we will draw on them to add the detail they need to easily identify as a car.

Each car is also going to have it's own stats that will be better or worse for you. One of these stats is your max fuel. One car has a max of 15, and the worst car with that stat has a max of 11. This shouldn't affect the game too much, but could make your game either better or worse.

Editing Some of the Rules

I have started getting together some rules that we can implement into the game to make sure it is played smoothly. We've started adding some of these parts to the rule booklet already, and TJ has done a few printing tests of it to make sure the booklet can be printed well later.

This is where the base game rules are found and how you can get ready to play.

Additional Gameplay Mechanics

We have added some other car mechanics that make each car slightly better or worse than others to add a bit of strategic thinking to the game. Since the person with the highest roll chooses their car, this could make the game more competitive since the players would want to get the best car. For example, if after playing the game a bit it's obvious that you don't need lots of fuel but top speed is good, you'd want to pick car 1 since it has the best top speed at the downgrade of only having 12 fuel points. This could work in reverse though if everyone seems to be losing lots of fuel quickly, so you'd want a larger fuel capacity so you don't have to pit as much.

Laminating the Additional Boards

We have laminated the Fuel Tracker and Lap Counter boards to make them stronger and more durable, which makes the game higher quality. This also will make it far easier to move the counters across them since they are more slippery than just plain paper which makes them easier to move.

TJ also has begun drawing a few things on the board. We have a nice red outline around most of the track, as well as making some of the inside curbs white and red checkered pattern to have a more realistic style track. He also added a few trees and some buildings that are very similar to the real ones at Buckmore Park, just to add a bit of realism to the board. This also makes it slightly less boring to look at since before it was just a plain, boring board with a track and green background, but adding some more designs make it look better. Sam also added a nice title to go on the top of the board which in in the style of the logo which we have on the rules booklet.

I did make some 2D designs of some wheels if we couldn't print the wheel counters in time. These would've been very easy to cut out and use on the boards, however, TJ did quickly go into 3DS Max and made this very simple wheel design which we are planning on printing. We'll then go on to painting them similarly to the 2D designs I did, so we can identify what tokens are for each vehicle.

With the token that is being printed, the base of one side is going to be completely flat, so the holes do not go all the way through the model. Although this isn't exactly how a wheel looks, it's the best we could do for the model when transferring it, but it still should look cool. This could make it easier to paint, and the flat base might make it slightly easier to move on the boards.

Printing and Colouring

Some of the first wheel counters have been printed and they look pretty cool. Due to their size, they obviously aren't perfect prints and they have some abnormalities, but overall they are ideal for what we needed them for. We are having the other four counters and cars printing and we will begin to start colouring them in to the specific colours. We have decided that we will use pen to draw on them, since it's probably the easiest way to do it, and should be the quickest and least messy way.

We now also have the four cars to go with the wheels.

They will also be drawn on with pen. Our idea for the drawing is probably going to be that the majority of the car is the designated colour for that player, but the windscreen will also be drawn on, as well as the tiny wheels. For the tyre tokens, they will have black tyres around the outside, and have a coloured rim to match the car.

Xander also made the board kind of foldable, so we are going to try and get a box for the game to all fit inside. Unfortunately, this does make some of the board look a bit strange and folded upwards when it's open, but it should be fine if we are able to get everything fitted inside a box, since every board game that you go out and buy in stores is inside a box to keep everything secure in one place so (most of the time) nothing gets lost when moving it.

And finally, we have the little pieces all ready to use! The other lot of wheel counters were printed after we finished colouring in the other wheels and cars. Unfortunately, the main issue with this is that the pen might rub off since it wasn't staying on that well when me and TJ were drawing on them due to the pen coming off when we were moving the pieces in our hands, but hopefully the pen will dry which should mean that it shouldn't go dull too quickly. This is one of the reasons that paint could've been better since it might have dried and not have been able to come off as easy, however, paint would've been a lot more difficult to get on in the first place due to the small and fidgety size. Overall though, they should be perfect for the game. Next, it is time for us to have a test game and try and get a box ready for everything to be put into.

My Contribution to the Rule Booklet

Although Sam has completed the majority of the rule booklet, I'm just going to highlight all of the parts that I added. Most of it may have just been rewording when we added the fuel tracker and lap counter, but still, I helped to create the booklet, as well as everyone else. I have highlighted any info that I remember adding on each slide in orange.

On the introduction page, I contributed by just writing some of these rules that we would need to enforce to make sure there wouldn't be any confusion whilst playing the game.

On the how to play page, I reworded some of the steps since we decided to start the pieces on the checkered flag spot instead, and we just moved away from the original rules slightly, so I updated them.

On the car pieces page, I reworded and added some of the information about the fuel since I was the person making the board, so it made sense for me to write the rules about it. In the first paragraph, I also edited a couple of words slightly so it was as easy to understand for the players as possible, especially highlighting the speed and top speed since it might be confusing for new players learning what the car stats mean.

I also coloured a few of the car models and took the pictures that would eventually be used in the rule booklet.

Finally, the chance card page. From what I can remember, I don't think I wrote much on this page, apart from including the rule of removing the safety car chance card from the deck when playing with only 2 players since this could make the game end too soon. I did of course create all of the chance cards, but it was Sam that added all of the pictures and info to the rule booklet.

Boxing the Project

Sam has got a box that we are able to use to contain all of the pieces. We have also printed the rule booklet and stapled the pages together. Sam is making a design for the top of the box (at least) with the game's logo and some information like age and number of players that can play.

This is the front of the box. Sam used the two logo designs he made and put them on a nice picture. He also added a age and player count to make it more professional. At the bottom (difficult to see in picture) he added our names to say who developed it, as well as some other little pieces of text that you would commonly find on a board game.

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