tips and elements and ideas to design a new board game

Ah, yes, the school projects have arrived again! As a teacher, I liked using games as teaching tools and as design challenges, but I was also far more aware of what goes into game design than most.

StudentD, you have been given a task that is beyond most of your teachers, I'm afraid, since very few of them have likely designed a game themselves. Have they given you any criteria, or design parameters? any explanation of game design theory (not game theory ala mathematics!)? I'm guessing not.

By what criteria will your work be judged? That might be the best way to look at this. Are they looking for snazzy graphical treatment for a theoretical design, or a playable game with unique mechanics? It's sort of like a math teacher giving students an assignment to write a piece of music using recursion. How would they be able to tell quality work?

If you're just looking at this as a graphical design project, you might want to take DSfans advice, and go for the cleverly-disguised Monopoly clone. It's a lot of work, really, but at least you're just re-wrapping a working machine, as it were.

If you're seriously interested in creating a new game altogether, I'd recommend the following steps as guidelines:

1.) Write down the names of the games you like to play that match the criteria you've been given (assuming you've been given any).

2.) Try to see if these games have any elements that are similar, from simple mechanical aspects (hmm, these two both use cards a lot, while these others use dice), to theme (these are all games about fighting or war, this one's about racing, but these others are just cards games).

3.) Is it possible to synthesize the things that are similar in the games you already like? For instance, your games list is Risk, Chess, Checkers, and Uno. Three of those are abstracts (only Risk has a theme), but Risk, chess and Checkers all have outright confrontation. Which sort of aspect do you want to see in your game? Perhaps an abstract boardgame along the lines of Chess would be a good start, in this case.

4.) Look your games up on BoardGameGeek.com, to see what other games are similar. Check their "Mechanics" section, and it will list to games that share those mechanics, as well as explanations of others.

5.) Design the simplest game you can. Details and complexity are easy; keep it limited, and you'll find the game play to be manageable to design and modify.

6.) Start playtesting as soon as you can. This is another reason why simpler games are better for this sort of project; you can play them quickly. Make any alterations very small, and keep careful track of the effects, so you can backtrack, if needed. the smallest changes can have huge consequences.

Present some of the thinking above here of the BGDF, and the feedback you'll get will be far more focused and helpful.

Good luck!

I hope this helps!