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Comissioned to create a board game - Help getting started

9 replies [Last post]
Sat, 06/05/2010 - 11:13
Marcusen
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Hi everyone, I'm an illustrator-designer (check my work here) who's been commissioned to create a board game around the theme of my local town festivities.

I'd like it to be easy to grasp and play, so kids and adults could play together, or just kids.

Using the local festivities theme is a must, and it presents a couple of problems:
- The board should represent a part of the old quarters of the city, and the players must traverse the board.
- Drawing the old quarters means that all the buildings façade should be present in the board.
- There's a load of different characters (20 different groups), which should be present somehow in the game, be it as avatars or otherwise.

This main problems, coupled with the fact that I want it to be easy to grasp, are overwhelming me. I don't even know if I should limit the number of players from the beginning, if it should be played with a dice or cards, well, I don't even know where to start!

If there's any board game out there which could be used as a template it would be really helpful.

Any and all help is welcome. Thanks in advance.

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Sat, 06/05/2010 - 12:47
#1
Black Canyon
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Some ideas

The first thing that pops into my head is a pick up and deliver type of game. Players have to visit various locations to pick up some sort of quest/item/or other directive and then travel to another location to complete it. Having a huge number of personalities present in the game could be as simple as a deck of character cards. These could be involved in the quests some how or simple be player avatars. You're not breaking the mold here, but I think the benefit is that it's an easy play concept to grasp and is accessible to children and adults.

Can you think of some overarching goal for the game?

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Sat, 06/05/2010 - 13:35
#2
Pastor_Mora
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What's the town?

You can start designing a game from a theme or from a mechanic. In your case, the theme. So the mechanic should fit it. That piece of info is quite important for anyone to give a sound advice. So, what's the town? Or at least, what are the festivities about? What do characters represent? trade guilds? political factions? war heroes? folklore creatures?

You see, I don't picture an auction mechanic working for a big-foot character, but it may suit you fine for trade guilds characters. So why don't we start from the beginning? What are we talking about here?

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Sat, 06/05/2010 - 16:36
#3
Dralius
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Theme is Key

Your art is very strong but game design and graphic design are two different things. Do you at least play allot of games?

I think doing your research fist before deciding what the game should be is the best idea. Your town will want more theme than game. In other words a very simple game with good art depicting the festivities will go over better that a real deep game that doesn’t cover the subject well.

First find out what you want the game to be about then build the game to fit that. Find a goal for the players. Lets say you are making a game about an art festival. The goal could be to visit as much of it as possible and to buy a painting, sculpture, etcc.. for your home. That will lead you to ideas on how the game can be constructed. For example if your collecting things a card driven game may work best.

Many people here will be willing to help you along for free. If you really get stuck and need the game engine made for you some of us including me will work for an hourly rate or a % and do everything except the artwork.

By the way where are you located, Spain? Google has failed to translate your website.

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Sat, 06/05/2010 - 21:58
#4
Pastor_Mora
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Barcelona

The site is in catalan.

Marc: have you checked "2 de Mayo" here?
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/36522/2-de-mayo

For something of the sort you are looking at but in New York
City Go - The Big City Discovery Game (2004) here
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/17979/city-go-the-big-city-discov...

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Mon, 06/07/2010 - 04:58
#5
Marcusen
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Answers to your comments

Thanks for your helpful replies. Some comments:

Black Canyon: Pick and deliver could be a solution, as there's a firecracker element in the festivities which has to be lighten up at the end. Finding various firecrackers around the board and bringing them to the goal, this could be the "overarching goal".
I'm still thinking about having character cards and how to implement them.
Firebrand rules!

Pastor Mora: As you say I already have the theme, and building a game around it gets pretty difficult as there's many elements to represent there.
The game should represent a small part of the festivities, in which the streets of the town get full of different folk characters with different backgrounds: traditional giants, fantasy creatures, folk dances... Most of them go "as is", and don't have much in common with one another. You can check all them out here (right menu).
I'll check CityGo!, it seems similar to what I want to achieve with this game.

Dralius: I've been playing videogames all my life, and some board games too (not as many). That's why I understand that good art helps the game, but I don't want it to be a boring/unbalanced/generic game. So designing the basic mechanics (even if they're quite simple) and prototyping them is a must.
Thanks for offering your designing skills for a fee, I'll shop around this board if I get stuck.
As Pastor Mora said, the website is in catalan.

As this game is going to take some months to get done, I'll be coming back from time to time posting the progressions made. Thanks everyone!

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Mon, 06/07/2010 - 06:05
#6
direpinnacle
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Colors and Groups

From what I'm seeing in the festivities, this is a very colorful, fun event with lots of groups involved. This makes me thing of two games: Pachisi and Trivial Pursuit. My suggestion would be to make a board with multiple starting positions, probably 4-8, representing major groups or alliances, and give each one of those a color. The board would have multiple paths, possible shaped like trivial pursuit with paths through the center, or some other shapes based on the town itself. Players would then have to go around the board collecting some item (cards?) representing each color, then to a final destination. The minor figures would be represented by specific spots on the board which had various good and bad effects- gain a random color, lose all blue cards, etc. I could work out more details if you had questions, but the rest should be based on the town and culture, probably. Hope that at least gives some inspiration.

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Mon, 06/07/2010 - 06:44
#7
Dralius
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Time?

Marcusen wrote:
As this game is going to take some months to get done, I'll be coming back from time to time posting the progressions made. Thanks everyone!

That is as it should be. Don't rush it. I know you must have a deadline but if needed get an extension. Often a design looks perfect when we first conceive of it then once its tested flaws emerge that must be dealt with one at a time.

Another reason to make the game simple is the length of development. A simple game may take months where a complex game could take a year or two to refine.

How much time do you have?

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Mon, 06/07/2010 - 11:55
#8
Marcusen
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Answers to your comments

direpinnacle: I like the idea of different starting positions, it could be made into the game if needed. It also seems like a good idea to create groups based on the existing characters, and having specific spots with good and bad effects.

Dralius: It has to be on time for december, so 5 months counting production time (which should be around 1 month). I'll try to spend the most time possible working on the mechanics and prototyping, leaving the "make-up" part for the end.

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Mon, 06/07/2010 - 15:35
#9
Dralius
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Marcusen wrote: It has to be

Marcusen wrote:
It has to be on time for december, so 5 months counting production time (which should be around 1 month). I'll try to spend the most time possible working on the mechanics and prototyping, leaving the "make-up" part for the end.

That is a short time. While you are working out the rules you should be line up a group of people to play test it. You’ll need to play the game as many times as possible with as many different people as possible to work out problems. In fact you should set out and let other play it without any suggestions from you. Being in the game sometimes is ok but you may by the nature of the way you play guide the game around problems. Unless you plan to go to everyone’s house when they want to play the finished game you need to see what happen on its own.

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