Creating a Timeline of Social Board Games: Trivial Pursuit

The pieces. Arguably the most recognizable aspect of the game.

The famous game of trivia. Another highly famous part of the game is the pieces that are used. The iconic coloured Pie Slices can be recognized almost instantly by many people across the world.the coloured pieces represent the question categories that the players must know trivia in. Answering questions gives the corresponding piece which slots into the yellow cylinder base piece. The first player to fill the base piece with all of the colours and moves to the centre of the board wins.

The board has spaces the same colours as the pieces and landing on one whil mean that aquestion of that catagory will be asked to the player. Players move by rolling  dice. There is also a 7th colour, Grey, which results the player rolling again when landed upon. 

Here is the board, the palyers must complete their Base Piece with all 6 colours before they can travel to the centre and win.

Board Image Source:

http://www.canadiandesignresource.ca/officialgallery/wp-content/uploads/2006/05/trivialpursuitimage1.jpg

Pieces Image Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/77/Trivialpursuit_Token.jpg/220px-Trivialpursuit_Token.jpg

Creating a Timeline of Social Board Games: Ticket to Ride

Here is the board from a British version of the game

Interestingly, i heard about this game from Xbox Live Arcade. I didn't know it was a board game until it was shown during a lecture in introduction to games design. the game is basically a game about creating train routes. It's surprisingly fun due to the colourful visuals and inclusion of real world locations.

Players must collect coloured cards which can be used to create routes. Cards are drawn at random so players don't know what colours they get. Players gets points based on the length of railways and if the player can complete the destination tickets they get by connecting to very distant cities.

During  a turn the player can either draw train cards (the coloured cards needed to create a route), create a route or draw more destination tickets.

This game is social more between friends who have an interest in trains. Arguments may arise as one player may seem lucky and get all of one colour cards, meaning they can easily build the longest routes.


Here is a link to where I got information from: http://www.daysofwonder.com/tickettoride/en/content/overview/?game=us

Image: http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/dem/personal/t2r/tunnelsbridges/tnb-entireukmap.jpg

Creating a Timeline of Social Board Games: Pictionary

Pictionary is like charades, a classic game where players must act out words for other people to guess. Usually based on pop culture. The difference with Pictionary is that players must draw the object and show it instead. Players have a minute to draw the object. The player who is drawing draws a card from a deck to receive the object they must draw. Other players must guess the object for the player to be successful in drawing. Friends have fun trying to guess what drawings are. Arguments and discussions arise from whether the cat someone drew looks more like a horse and other fun topics. Friends can talk long after the game as it shows peoples true drawing skill. It influenced the game Draw Something, found on smartphones. the game is essentially the same but is played over the internet and has no board. It lacks most of the social aspect as you have no real contact with the people you play with. They are in your facebook friends list, but you can't actually see them through the game. There is also a board game. It's not that different to Pictionary, also made by Zynga. A company known for not really coming up with new or unique ideas.

Source: http://miad.utrechtblog.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/43/files//2011/09/pictionary-13640.jpg

Creating a Timeline of Social Board Games: Primordial Soup

Primordial Soup is an interesting game from 1997. It is based off of the Primordial Soup theory that all life on earth formed from a single source or a 'soup' of carbon which was influenced by various chemicals to create life. Each player gets coloured pieces and the main goal of the game to evolve the player's starting amoeba  Players take phases to turns. The first is to feed the amoeba by moving it in the direction with the current direction card, by the number of spaces printed on the amoeba. After moving the eats one of the coloured cubes not of the same colour as the player then must add two cubes of the players colour as excretion. over turns, players evolve by creating new genes or creating mutating old ones. The goal of the players is to be the longest to survive.

Here is a review of the game: http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/11/11109.phtml I got images from there too.

Creating a Timeline of Social Board Games: Carcassonne

This is a game I played during time at university. It is a fun game played by up to 5 players. Each player gets a different set of coloured pieces that are shaped like people. The goal of the game is to gain points and travel furthest on the board. The players move based on points gained by placing tiles on the table and creating places like roads, castles, forts and farms. Players can take these places when they build them by placing one of their pieces on that place. The piece can be removed when the area object has been completed. For example, if the players create a fully complete castle, the players involved in it's creation gain the points for the castle. A new player can contribute to building and gain a share of the points for completing the building. At the end, the player who has built the most and gained the most points wins. The larger a building, the more points that are gained.

Players will usually act friendly to try and get large structures as others help build, making them as large as possible. Or they could be cold and get angry if any other person tries to take any points from their structures.

Here is what the finished game could look like.The brown areas are castles and the white areas are roads. Players would place pieces on places they own until they are finished.

Source: http://norvig.com/carcassonne.jpg

Creating a Timeline of Social board Games: Yahtzee

Yahtzee is a popular game from 1956. A game that uses 5 dice, a cup and a complicated scoring system. It can be played alone but like many games is better with friends. I never really understood how scoring worked in Yahtzee so I would play a metagame where rolling higher numbers than your friends mean you won, or rolling a Yahtzee (all 5 dice are the same) would create an uproar of excitement due to how rare it was. It was also exciting to get multiples of the same number. This was similar in style to a minigame in New Super Mario Bros. on the DS. There was a card game which put the player against Luigi. Whoever had the better hand won. Often it was down to had the most cards of the same type. A full house would be like a Yahtzee where all of the cards in the hand would be the same.

Source: http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51O89reUcuL._SY300_.jpg

Source: http://gamingmemoirs.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Poker-Luigi-New-Super-Mario-Bros.png

I still don't really understand the rules, but someone has tried to explain it here: http://grail.sourceforge.net/demo/yahtzee/rules.html

Creating a Timeline of Social Board Games: KerPlunk

Name: Kerplunk

Rules:
This game has players taking turns to pull sticks out from the central column. The player that makes the marbles resting on the sticks fall by removing an ill placed stick. This game is very skill based.

Social Aspects:
 Kerplunk encourages talk between players as often arguments will arise as to which sticks will cause the marbles to fall. One player may believe that a stick will be safe to remove but another player will smile knowing that they will in fact fall. Then an argument as to who is right will ensue.



Source: http://smythstoys.static.s3-website-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/product_images/100152_L.jpg

Final Project - Group Game Design Document and Pitch

For this years final assignment I've been placed in a group with two others in my group to create a game design document, using everything we have learned this year based on a theme based on the lecturer's choice. The them for my group was Assassins and Ninjas.

I've been assigned in creating the game world, some of the mechanics, choosing an engine and deciding on the main gameplay functions. So far, I've started to look into multiple engines that could be used. The three engines I looked at are Cryengine 3, Unity 3D and Unreal Engine 3/4. These three engines are free to use, but do cost money to sell a game made in that engine. I've also gone into some pros and cons for each.

In terms of the game world, I've created a very basic map (in paint). Its landscape is based off of a mixture of Japanese mountainous towns, Middle Eastern deserts to western cities. The world will be open to explore, similar to skyrim where mountains can be scaled and cities can be visited.

I still have work to do for mechanics and main gameplay ideas. So far the main gameplay idea is a mixture of Skyrim, Assassins creed and Ninja gaiden. There are a few gameplay mechanics such as trading for items instead of buying them with currency and followers who you must constantly help otherwise they will not help you back in return.

I've updated this post after completing a presentation to the lecturer, pitching the game. Overall, presentation went well and I enjoyed the experience. I do need to work on my presentation skills, likely I'll need to work on saying things in as few words as possible as at the end very little time was left to talk about game engine choice.