How it functions/rules of the game:
The way this game functions is similar to a board game called snake game, and that is were I got the inspiration to this game. For this game, players (kids) will use the figures they chose to try and get to the ending place. The number of steps they take is related to the types of questions they answered in the question cards. If they answer a question on the cards that has a number 5 written on it, they can move 5 steps toward the ending place if they got it correctly. The higher the number is on the card, the harder the question will be.
while moving on, the player will try to avoid landing on the grids that have a H written on it. The H represent a hunter, and a hunter will take away one life of your figure. Each figure represent a different type of endangered animals and have different numbers of lives. For example: The figure s Tiger represents Sumatran tiger. There are only about 400 of these tigers alive, so it has 4 lives. The P Alligator represents the Philippine alligator, which only have about 100 of them still surviving in the whole world. Players will need to answer different questions in order to avoid landing on where the hunter is.
My successful criteria of the educative board game is:
- Educative
- Fun
- Functions well
- Easy for kids to understand
- Can be played multiple times
- Enjoy with family
- Release stress
During the improving process, I adjusted my board game by reviewing the problems I have faced during the previous prototypes to make sure it matches the successful criteria of my board game.
For the first prototype, it is just an idea of the board game. it is not very detailed, and it cannot function. Because the rules are not really clear, it also cannot be fun or educative since it cannot be played. So, in the second prototype, I focused detailedly improving and finalising the rules of the board game so that at least it is a game that can be played. I learned from the first prototype that rules are critical to a game, different rules can change the main purpose of the game. Without these restrictions, a board game won’t even function normally.
What I learned from the second prototype is that the topic of a board game is also important for its audience. In my second prototype, the topic of the board game is more about protecting the environment. I thought that kids might want to learn about the environment. But after some further more researching, I suddenly realised that the environment is a very wide topic of kids, os I decided to narrow it down. I realised that kids are often more interested in animals, and that is how I changed my focused of the board game. After that, I changed my topic/focus of the board game in to animal protection. I changed my purpose to educate kids of the situation endangered animals. Narrowing down the topic makes me know more about what types of board game I want to design and how will I make it so that it is a successful board game.
After hand drawing multiple version of prototypes, I finally laser cut my final prototype of the board game. I believed that after all the changes and adjustments I made on my previous prototypes really helped a lot on improving my board game. Because of that, I believe that my board game is a pretty successful board game according to the success criteria on the previous stage.
First of all, this board game that I made functions pretty well. Because of the adjustments of rules and playability during both prototypes (mainly first prototype), this board game now functions as well as any other board games. It has a goal to accomplish and there are challenges when players are trying to accomplish the goal/target. This is what all games must have in order to function. The board game also functions because it can be played multiple times. The purpose of this game is to educate small kids about the situation of the endangered spices, and the questions cards is one of the most important way of educating them. Which means that as long as there are still cards that haven’t been used, the game can be played multiple times with multiple different people.
The board game is also very educative because of the rules and way that the game functions. The question cards will educate the kids about endangered spices. After knowing how pathetic these animals are, kind kids will help these animals both now and in the future when they have the ability do more things for animals. The figures will make kids get more familiar with the different endangered spices, and their situation toward extinction. These are all ways that shows how educative is this board game.
At last, in my opinion the board game also successfully achieves the goal of fun and enjoying with family. Since there is multiple figures in this game, this means that more than multiple people can play at the same time. That means this game can be played between families. Because of the game board, this game is also easy for kids to understand. The game board is similar to snake game—an easy game that doesn’t require that much of thinking. Because of that, the board game will not be hard for small kids to understand.
Reflection:
While designing this board game, I really enjoyed with the fixing my mistake with building up the next prototype. Every time when I adjusting and look at my previous prototype, I always figure out something new. Sometimes it is a idea from my self, and other times it is a inspiration from other games. I know all these ideas can improve my game, and make my thinking more wide and creative when designing. That is always the part that I did well on—-learning from the previous prototypes.
But the hard part is when I am brainstorming a game when there is not a lot of inspirations. At the beginning of the project, I didn’t really have a lot of ideas and experience about designing a game, which cost me to think a long time and came up with nothing at all. I was just thinking and thinking, but that didn’t really work out. I can’t really think of any types of board game.
I would go do more research about board games if I have one more chance of this project. That way, I will have more ideas to experiment and explore on which might give me better final product. Also, researching more on the internet will make me have more of my own ideas of designing a board game.
After all the work I did for this project, I am quite happy with how the game functions. I believe that because of all the adjustments and changes I did to the game board and the rules, the way that the board game functions and how educative it is looks alright to me. I feel that it can really teach and educate the small kids about the endangered spices.
But one of the things that I didn’t do that well is adding decorations to the game board. If I have more time and ideas, I will definitely add decorations to it. Because kids will often get attracted by fancy things, adding decorations will make the board game look more attractive and more kids will play it. Not only that, but as players, people will more likely to play games that looks good or attractive to them, and that is the importance of adding decorations. But I wasted too much of my time on making different prototypes and fixing it, I forgot the importance of decorations.