Board game creation

This time I will be deviating a little from the previous posts. When I participated in DADIU ‘22 in the role of game & level design, we had a day during the team introduction trip where people got sorted into groups to work on creating a board game from scratch. I came up with an idea that the team went with and I always liked what we worked on trying to make. Earlier this month there was a testing day in central Copenhagen where people could show up to both get their mockups/prototypes tested and volunteer to test for others, for both computer and analog games, and this made me want to try and finish up a version of the previously mentioned idea that could explore some of the additional thoughts I’ve had about it since.

So going forward on this blog page, hopefully some progress with creating a prototype based off this boardgame idea will be intermixed with my ‘big’ game idea and potentially other game creating thoughts too.

First picture is of one of the earliest versions on the day. At this point we had noticed that team only tiles would not be doable and started to make tiles both teams could create a connection through, depending on how it was placed.

The second picture is a few versions later, starting positions for the routes were now a thing to be picked without communicating between the team members and we experimented with environment like a mountain block in the middle that could not be used and weather that prevented action where it currently was. At this point we had explored the multi team tiles, and had begun to look at what happened when each team were assigned a set amount of each type of tile.

The basic idea as it is currently: 4 players, separated into teams of two, the river construction team and the rails construction team, take turns placing a tile that has either connections only for one team or for both teams, the first team to connect from their 2 starting positions across the board wins.

The biggest challenge will be the balancing aspect. How many tiles should the players have access to? which tiles should they have access to? and how should they have access? These will be the main focus points as tactical placing of the tiles is the core and the decisions directly influence how the game will be played by the players.

Morphing

As part of the main mechanic for this game, the character needs to be able to morph as a response. This leaves me with a bit of a dilemma.

Do I keep things as simple as possible and just do the classic pill shape for a character mockup and experiment with that from the get go and run the risk of ending with a solution that can’t be transfered to a character? Or do I put the game itself on hold and get into learning Blender and creating a low poly simple bipedal figure with a rig and THEN experiment on morphing that to another?

The thesis writing is almost done, with the deadline for hand-in in a few days, and I will then be able to dedicate the next month or so to whichever direction I chose to explore first. As always the myriad of choices is the worst part.

I do hope to be able to show you some of my ideas in images soon. This blog could use some more of those.

A bit about the early part of this journey.

Almost missed the mark for posting a blog post this month, but here it is.

As I move forward with this project, my next focus will be on the mechanics for the game and the style of the game I am currently aiming towards, while also trying to settle on which engine to use. I have already decided that I want to make this as a 3D platformer variant, and I have been looking for and collecting a list of games to play through to try and see which elements work and don’t work for the specific games. I recently completed ‘Time on Frog island’ and ‘A hat in time’, and since I backed Psychonauts 2 I have that ready to go and just need to find the time to delve deeper into it. Other stuff on the list includes games like FE, Figment, Super Mario Odyssey and a bunch more. I am of the belief that the more I experience, both games and stuff not related to games, the richer an experience I will be able to create in the end.

I have narrowed down my choice of game engine to either Unity or Unreal. This is due to the fact that a lot of the games that I am going through have been created in one of them, and for me the ability to use a visual scripting approach feels more natural than writing code and each of them has their own solution in this area.

With regards to the mechanics, there are some that are pretty settled within this style of game, so one of the challenges becomes how to both use some of the established control ‘tropes’ while also adding one or more things on top of that, to make this have its own place in comparison.

Initial thoughts - setting

I mentioned briefly in the opening blog post that the core of my game idea revolves around music and shapeshifting. My first step to take from that is to find a setting that is a good fit for this and allows for both variety and a coherent style.

I have been looking into different cultures that has elements of shapeshifting in them, but in the end I feel the strongest pull from the Oceanic/Polynesian cultures in regards to this. There is also a rich tapestry of stories about spirits and gods/demigods to get inspired by.

There are some potential pitfalls I need to avoid though. First, I have to be extremely aware of cultural appropriation. To this end I need to find someone with knowledge and experience to help guide me. Do not hesitate to use the contact form to let me know of good people and sources I can look up.

If you're reading the above and your first thought is "Oh, he wants to make a game involving Maui", then no, not necessarily. While the character does fit the shapeshifting part, he is already a demigod and I feel like the player would miss part of a character journey by starting with that knowledge. It is of course possible to make it an origin story for those shapeshifting powers, but at this point I much rather want to have the player character start as for example some kind of spirit living in one of the natural settings of the islands.

The humble beginnings

This is just the initial post to get myself going on doing this whole blog thing. So I figure I might as well outline my plans for this corner of the site.

While the Portfolio link in the top bar will show you projects I’ve participated in and a brief overview of the responsibilites I’ve had during those projects, I hope to be able to bring a more indepth look of my thought process on how I work with games and game design in this blog. I am not yet sure about how often I will be updating this, but my current plan is to keep up at least one post per month, and hopefully more as inspiration strikes.

Of the actual planned content so far, I will be bringing you along on my journey to bring to life a computer game idea that has been running around inside my brain for about a year at this point in time. Keywords at this point in time are: Music, Shapeshifting, Puzzles.