Trapped Final Print and Play

My game is finally coming together, the print and play of "Trapped" is finished and ready to play! It has taken a lot of work and planning to make it, but it's been enjoyable. Next is the constructing the physical game, be ready! Listed below are the links to my final print and play board game! Print them out for yourself and try out my game! Enjoy!


Trapped Final Print and Play

Trapped Rule Book Final

Also here is a picture of some of friends playing my print and play game!

Finished Board Art

Finished Board Art

I ended changing my whole concept art for my board game art. What I started with was not futuristic enough, and didn't really follow my original plan, so I changed it. Here it is below. Still need to make some changes.

Storytelling Illustration- Exploratory Sketches

Storytelling Illustration- Exploratory Sketches 

Below are 5 of my thumbnail sketches refined for my board game illustration. This will be what is actually going on the box for my board game.

Breakfast Sketch

Here is a quick sketch of my breakfast.....waffles.

Storytelling Illustration for Board Game (Thumbnails)

Questions Revised and Answers


What in the game is unbalanced?
     
     I recently made a change in my game that involved the explorer being able to use 2 die instead of 1, while the guard only had 1. When we tested this mechanic it failed and made my game very unbalanced. This is one part of my game that is unbalanced, because it is much easier for the explorer to escape from the guard. Another unbalanced element of my game is the time it takes to set up. I made my board increasingly bigger, which also increased the number of flippable tiles on the board. The process of setting all of these individual tiles take way too long. I need to make it balanced more so that the set up takes less time.

Should I incorporate cards into my game instead of using tiles?

      The tiles in my game have many down sides, for example it takes too long to set up, players get confused on whether they take the pieces off the board or leave them. Also they are too small to grab easily. Cards would seem like a much better solution than using tiles.

Is anything unclear in the rulebook?

      My rulebook gets a little too wordy, and I tend to be very repetitive at parts. I also need to move some of my additional instructions into the beginning of the rulebook. I also need to have sections of rules for each character more clearly divided in my rules.

Is anything in the game confusing?

      The way that I have the explorer starting with 1 key is a bad mechanic, and confuses people. Another confusing part of my game is how at the end when the explorer is trying to let the monster out, I need to fix it so that the player doesn't have to roll a certain number to get to him, that rule contradicts my game.

Is my game skill based enough?

     My game relies on chance and skill, but a good portion is chance. An easy fix to that is when I change my tiles to cards, I could have it so that players can keep the card they land on if it's positive and use it when they want. Then they have to plan out when the best time to use the card is. Then with the negative cards, they will be required to use them right away. That should even out the skill and chance in my game.

Play Testing Questions

Board Game - Play testing Questions


What was unbalanced in the game?

Should I use cards instead of having tiles you flip?

What is unclear?

Is anything confusing?

Do the rules read clearly?

Rough Rough Draft for Board Game 

Here is a rough outline of my rules. They still need a lot of work but it's a start.

Trapped

By: Brooke Olson

20 minutes

2 players

“Release, destroy or survive, it’s your choice.” This game is simple stratgety fighting game, involving an explorer protector, and monster. You get to play as either the explorer or protector. The goal varies depending on who you play as. 

Objective

The objective of the game varies depending on which character is picked. If the explorer is picked, his objective is to collect the 4 keys on the board, and then attempt to release the monster. If the protector is picked, his objective is to destroy the explorer before he releases the monster.

Components

Board Game
14 dark blue tiles
12 green tiles
10 light blue tiles
1 center cage
4 key tiles
1 die

Setup

To start the set up of the game you first need to lay down the board on a flat surface. Then without looking at the backside of the tiles place the color coordinated tiles on their matching colors, face down, so that the words are hidden. ( See additional instructions fro details on tiles.) Then place the center cage with the monster inside in the middle of the board, where the larger pentagon is located. The player’s character then starts at either horizontal end of the board, doesn’t matter which character is at which end.
(add picture of board set up showing where players start)

Players will switch off turns going back and forth, a “turn” is a single players chance to play, not a “round” where it is everyone around the table having a turn.

Next it has to be decided who starts, to this the 2 players will roll a dice and whoever gets the highest number gets to go first. They then switch off the rest of the game.

Starting The Game

To start the game players decide which character they want to play as, then once both players have decided, the roll a die. Whoever has the highest number goes first.

To start the first player must roll again. Then depending on the number they roll they then move that number of spaces, in any direction they want. (hint: the explorer has to first collect all 4 keys before attempting to release the monster, the starting space has the first key. The protector must try and kill the explorer.)

If the player chooses/ happens to land on a colored space, they must flip the tile over and read the back. Then they must do whatever the tile says, and keep the tile flipped so that it known for the rest of the game that someone already landed on that tile.

The Second Turn And Beyond

The second players turn then begins, they too start off by rolling the die, and move whatever the number is that they rolled. The same rules apply as above, for the moving and landing on colored spaces.

If the protector lands on the same space as the explorer he is allowed to try and kill him. Once the protector lands on the same space he must roll again and try and get an even number, he has one try. If he rolls an even number then he kills the explorer. If he does not get an even number, the protector’s turn ends and it moves on to the explorers turn, and the explorer has a chance to get ahead.

Winning And Losing The Game

For the explorer to win the game, he must first collect all of the 4 keys on the board, he starts with one key, so he must collect the other 3 by navigating around the board. Once he has collected all 4, he can attempt to get to the middle of the board and let the monster out. If he makes it to the middle and gets the correct number of spaces or a higher number he is declared the winner, because he let the monster out before being killed by the protector. 

For the protector to win he must hunt down the explorer and catch up to him. If the protector lands on the same space as the explorer, the protector must roll his dice again, and if he rolls an even number he is declared the winner. If he rolls an odd number, his turn ends and the explorer gets to go a turn. The protector just has to keep trying to catch up to the explorer and roll and even number.

Whoever completes their objective first wins!

Additional Instructions

What do certain tiles mean?

The color of the tiles do not matter, all of the tiles are completely random. 

Players can only flip one colored tile they land on per turn. 

The teal colored tiles are the keys. 

Only the colored tiles have additional moves, grey tiles mean nothing. 

Alternate Rules

If you like the basic game, you can spice up the game by adding these advanced rules. 

The explorer and the protector must both collect all 4 keys, instead of just the explorer. 

An Example Of Play

Round 1

Explorer: Rolls the die and gets a 3, moves ahead 3 spaces. Lands on a green tile. Flips the tile over, it says “advance 2 spaces ahead.” Player one then advances ahead 3 spaces. Then lands on purple colored tile. ( Player one turn ends because they cannot flip more than one colored tile per turn, so they must wait until their next turn to flip the tile they are on.) Player one hands the dice to playerr two. 

Protector: Rolls the dice, gets a 4, moves ahead 4 spaces, lands on a blue tile, flips the tile over, it says “Player advances to colored tile nearest to the opponent.” Player two then moves to the closest color tile near the explorer. Hands dice to player one. 

Round 2

Explorer: Flips the colored tile, it says “ Go to nearest key.” Navigated to second key and now has two keys. (Started with one key, and just collected the second one. ) Hands off dice to the player two. 

Protector: Flips the tile he was on, and tells him to move 2 spaces, he lands on the same tile as the explorer. Now he rolls again, and rolled a 3. Since he rolled an odd number he doesn’t kill the explorer. He must roll an even number to eliminate him. 

Round 3

Explorer: Rolls the die, and gets a 5, moves 5 spaces and lands on a grey space. So nothing happens, he hands the die off the player two.
Protector: Rolls the die and gets a 6, navigates to the desired tile and lands on the same tile as the explorer, he rolls the die, and rolls a 2, which is an even number so he wins the game. The monster was not let out before the explorer died, so the explorer loses.

I also started working on the concept of the board, and a few characters. I will list a few pictures below. 

Here is the concept so far so my board. For my actual final, I would like to make the board out of clear and colored plexi-glass. 

This is the concept for my monster, he will stuck in the middle cage. This is the monster that the explorer is trying to let out. 

Theme and Concept Statement for Board Game

Theme and Concept Statement for Board Game

Concept: Release, destroy or survive, it’s your choice!

        My game theme is,  “A Monster is trapped, and the explorers job is to release him without being caught by the protector! “ In “Trapped” players have the option to play as either a protector who is ahead of the monster protection program, and he makes certain that this monster does not leave his cage. Or players can play as an explorer who has found this monster and wants to release him so he can do further studies. The future relies on these three characters, the monster, protector, and explorer. What will happen, and who will change the world?

       “Trapped” is set in the future and is in a futuristic forest. Everything started when this monster was first found and the monster protection program decided to keep the monster hidden in a forest, and lock him in a cage. They then assigned him a protector that watches over him and keeps him safe from anyone and anything. Then an explorer came around and found this monster, he made it his goal to release the monster. He wanted to further his studies and learn about this monster.

      Since I am going for a futuristic look for my game, I found some reference pictures that I think relate very well to my concept. 

This first image is from an art of Halo book, and it has nice colors and I really enjoy the environment. I feel like mixing this with a few other ideas can help make my futuristic forest believable. 

This image is from a Star Wars book, and I really like the colors and it looks futuristic to me. The cage that my monster is going to be in. I would possibly include lights and I think blue lights would look good. 

This photo is from the art of Halo book also, and again I really enjoy the colors and would like to make my board game similar to this kind of look. 

This image is from the art of Halo book also, I like this sketch and I feel like it's a good reference for when I start constructing my board. I really like the idea of how they have the a path leading out to the middle. I was thinking maybe I could incorporate that into my board game. 

This is another image from the art of Halo book, and this image looks very futuristic also. I think the overall look and color scheme is nice.

This image is from the Lilo and Stitch art book, I feel like this image is a good reference for my monster. 

This is my last reference image, overall I found this to be an awesome reference, it shows exactly how I want some of the aspects of my game to look. I really enjoy the colors in this picture and how everything is placed in the composition. 

Lastly is my color scheme, I want it to look futuristic yet not to distracting. I picked some colors that I think coordinate well and will look good overall. I want to include these colors in my board game and the pieces. 

Observational Sketches 

Sketch of front of Goldstein. September 11th, 2014

Sketch of hat on caution light. September 14th, 2014

Sketch of water bottle. September 26th, 2014

Sketch of palm tree. September 27th, 2014

Sketch of a leaf. September 28th, 2014

Sketch of bike rack area. September 29th, 2014

Sketch of Philip outside. September 30th, 2014.

Sketch of backpack. October 1st, 2014

Sketch of grapes. October 2nd, 2014

Sketch of bird. October 3rd, 2014

Game Mashup: Operation Battleship

For game design we had to use two different games and combine them, and make our own rules. Below you will see the rules and some photographs of what we did. 

Operation Battleship:

By: Brooke Olson, Arielle Mckelvey, and Cullan Gibbons

Two player strategy game

Rules:

Players play as cat pirates determined to get the most battleships and treasure ships.

Battleships pieces stay the normal battleship pieces, and the Operation pieces are transformed into cargo  ship pieces. You play on the Battleship board and use the Operation money as well as the pieces.

The two players both start out with 4 cargo ships each. The Battleships have to be bought, their price depends on the number of divots in each ship. (Each divot is $100). The players place their cargo ships where they want, same for the Battleships. Players earn money by obtaining other player's cargo ships. To obtain other cargo ships the player must guess the correct row that the opponents ship is in. Players guess by row and try to obtain any cargo ships in that row. If a battleship is in that row, one peg of damage is added. Players can potentially guess a row twice to hit a ship more than once. If a ship is sunk by all the divots being filled, it is placed back into the pile and it must be re-purchased. 

If a player chooses to purchase a ship, they must count that as their turn and they cannot attack during this turn. Once a player purchases a ship the money they use must go into a discard pile, and does not come back into gameplay. 

Obtaining cargo earns a player $400. They also obtain the cargo piece(s) they hit and they are then placed on the other players board.  

Game ends when all of the money is gone. Gameplay then stops and the player with the most monetary value on board wins. 

If a tie occurs, the player who has the least amount of damage done to their ships wins. If the tie remains, a sudden death must occurs and whoever hits the other players Battleship first by guessing wins. 

Artwork

I completed this drawing my freshman year, in drawing 1. The assignment consisted of us having to draw two perspectives of a building on campus. Then from that we had to create a new perspective that we can't see, and draw it out. The drawing that is above, is the perspective that I created. This assignment was very difficult to do, because creating a perspective that you haven't observed is very tricky. I did learn a lot from this assignment, like how to think differently about perspective and how it works. 

Board Game Brainstorming

Board Game Brainstorming

For Game Design we are creating our own board game and thinking about some games that I have played, there are a lot of successful features to them. I’ve been playing board games ever since I was little and I have many favorites. 

Battleship

This combat game where you tried to destroy the enemy team was definitely one of my favorites. Some successful features that Battleship has are how simple it is to play, but yet it’s very fun. Also the way they use two separate boards is a very useful technique, and it works perfectly for the game. It also uses a grid system well for it’s layout, it works perfect and makes it easy to say A2 or something and then your opponent knows exactly what you are talking about. It’s inspiring that a game so simple became so addicting to play and is so popular. A few things that could improve Battleship would be maybe the design of the bomb pieces; maybe they could be made more representational of a bomb. A crazy or outrageous thing that Battleship does is the fear of your ship being hit or destroyed. I really like the overall concept of this game, and would like to try and incorporate a few of it’s features into my own game, or even changing some of the features into my own.

Candy Land

This game is a race to the finish, and whoever gets there first is the winner. This is a classic game that is simple and is played in a short amount of time. It took the simple race to the end concept and added some traps and stops it takes you on, on you way to the finish. Candy Land’s simplicity and versatility work well for it, since it’s so simple and quick to play almost anyone can play it. Candy land could improve its overall design of the board, and make some better graphics also. Candy Land has a few crazy or outrageous things, like some of the places you stop at can be a little outrageous. I like the concept of the game and some of the traps and bad cards you can get, I would like to try and incorporate that into my game also.

Monopoly

This strategy-based game is fun board game and one of the most popular. It has very many successful traits. Some of them being how they used the spaces you land on, to be something you can purchase, or something you lose money on. I really like how they integrated real life scenarios into the game, like when you receive money, or how you can go to jail, and buying and selling property. All of which are very successfully used and make the game fun to play. Monopoly could be a better game if it could be played faster; I almost rarely finish a full game of Monopoly. Its game play just seems to drag on after a while. A crazy or outrageous thing that Monopoly does it the trading system it has with cards. Overall Monopoly is a very fun game and has an awesome concept behind it. I would like to try and incorporate the trading feature that Monopoly has into my game possibly.

Game Ideas

1. A war-like game where the player would roll a dice, and there would also be cards and have to obtained different weapons, and the overall goal is to destroy the enemy team.
2. A game mechanic where the player can move their own pieces on their turn, but there is also the option to move the opponents piece too.
3.  A game possibly called island trap where people are stranded on an island and to survive the player needs to go around the board and collect things. The first person to collect all of the needed things and escapes wins.
4. A game mechanic where there are certain spots that can be landed on, on the board, and the player must get a card from landing on those certain spots.
5. A game possibly called galaxy run where everyone is a different spaceship and the goal is to try and get to the Launchpad first, to move the player must roll a dice and pick up cards.
6. A game involving pirates, where there are two teams and the goal is to try and collect treasures.
7. A game that has a spinner and the player would collect pieces and build a castle, and whoever builds theirs first wins.
8. A game possibly called troll hunt, where the player must go through the board and roll a dice to move, and they collect different weapons that they use to try and kill the troll, there could be spots you land on where they could possibly lose weapons.
9. A game where there is an assassin, it starts off with cards being dealt and one person ends up getting the assassin card and no one knows. Need at least 3 players.
10. A game possibly called Trapped, where there is a monster stuck in a box in the middle and there are explorers and protectors and the explorers are trying to release the monster and the protectors are trying to kill the explorers.
11. A game mechanic where there is something in the middle that the players all try and fill with pieces of there own color that everyone gets as they move along the board. When the cup is filled, whoever has the most of their color in the cup wins.
12. A game involving ghosts where it’s a race to the end, there is a maze that is followed, and there are cards that the player picks up and they can possibly send them forward or back to graveyards.
13. A game about robbery, the overall goal is to rob a diamond. Each player rolls and draws a card, they keep the cards and in order to rob the diamond they need a certain amount of cards. Other players can trick other players by making them think you have the certain amount of cards.
14. A game mechanic where there is a spinner in the middle that allows the player to move. It’s colored and depending on the color they get, it determines what card they got.
15. A game possibly called alien invasion where there is a spaceship at the end, and the aliens try to get to the spaceship.
16. A game involving robots, there are 3 different levels of robots and the player wants to get the highest level, and to get that you must collect thing from the board.
17. A game mechanic that is a grid like board and the player must draw cards, some cards say that a certain spot blows up. If the player is on that spot or the enemy is then whoever it is, dies.
18. A game involving the alphabet, the player has to go through the board, which is made up of every letter A-Z. The player must go along and roll a die then whatever letter is landed on, the player must draw a card and it gives them a category. From that they must say a word that is connected to the category and starts with whatever letter they are on.
19. A game mechanic where the player tries to own more land than the opponent, and whoever owns the most land first wins.
20. A wizard game where there are different kinds of wizards and the player must gain powers and needs to destroy things that are blocking their way. Goal is to get the other teams side first.

3 board game broken down

1. My first game is called Trapped, where there is a monster stuck in the middle of the board inside of a box. There are then two opposing players, the explorer and the protector. The explorer is trying to let the monster out of its box, and the protector is trying to protect the monster so he is trying to kill the explorer. This will be a 2-player game, to move around the board you must roll a die. I want my theme to be very futuristic, and I am thinking about making my board out of Plexiglass, and I also want a light to be in the cage with the monster if possible. Then on the board you will have pieces that fill the cut out spots, and those pieces are colored Plexiglass, and they will be flipped over so that when the player lands on them, they have to flip them over themselves and on the back the piece will say either something good or bad. The player could either use the piece right away or save it.

2. My second board game idea would involve pirates. There would be 2 teams and they want to collect treasures. On the board there would bridges and boats, and the player needs a certain amount of points to cross and points are achieved by going to the treasure chests. Once the player crosses the bridges they get more treasure chest points. To finish the game they must cross using the boat, and they need a certain amount of points to cross using the boat. Also the player must cross all of the bridges and get the treasure chest before they can cross using the boat. Once they make it to the island using the boat they win. The players roll dice to move and some spaces on the board are dead spaces or make the player move forward or backwards. There are also certain spots that can be landed on that make the player pick a card. The cards will then have things that say certain things, and one example is that the player can either move their own piece forward 3 spaces or move their enemies piece backwards 3 spaces.

3. My last board game idea involves an assassin. I want to make a game where you have at least 4 players, three of them are civilians, and one of them is an assassin. Everyone first gets dealt a card telling him or her who they are, and one person ends up with the assassin but no one knows who. Then everyone grabs character pieces, which are all similar except for color difference, The assassins goal is to eliminate the other players, and the other players want to get to the other side of the city, before they get killed. The assassin wins once he kills everyone, and the civilians win if they all get to the other side of the city alive. To move around the players will have to roll a dice.