Whispering Pines Campground Alana Fusaro Hunter King Lincoln He
Contents Project Descrition Concepts & Prototype Play Testing Final Game Design Review & Reflection
Project description To start to develop our camping theme our group brainstormed about what part of camping we wanted to focus on. We decided on “telling ghost stories around a campfire”. From here we wanted to make the game a bit scary or at least creepy. We looked at different scary board games online and even bought one called “The Last Night on Earth” and took inspiration from it. From this game we realized that in order for the game to scare people it had to accomplish two things it needed to immerse the players in the world of the game and it needed to have a large amount of player interaction. So we worked to make every part of the game as immersive for the players as possible. At some point we realized that trying to make the game scary through graphic imagery was really an impossibility so we instead tried to make it a more tongue and cheek type of creepy. Alanna stumbled across the aesthetic of old Boy Scout manuals and we tried to develop that style into our game, mostly into the rulebook and character cards. Being a Boy Scout I was able to get some of my old uniforms mailed to us to use for our imagery. By combining a clean and orderly look with tongue and cheek violent imagery I think we were able to accomplish our aesthetic quite well.
Play testing Play testing played a very important role in creating our game. Our original idea was to have ghosts and campers battle on a grid, and consider the entire are the camp ground. The problem with this idea was that the ghost players ended up being afraid of the campers and were running away from them. Logically this didn't make any sense. So we changed it so that the ghosts were more powerful, and campers had to rely on cards in order to survive. We also were struggling to make our game more interactive and dimensional. So we changed our game objective to having the campers go out into the forest and bring wood back to the fire. This allowed our game to be more dimensional because the campers had to leave the campground (a grid) and travel down paths (similar to candy land, which adds another layer of creepiness). Also, it allowed us to keep the fire the main focus. It was important for us to have the players connect with their character, so that out game was more interactive and competitive. So, we gave each character and identity and allowed the player to choose who they wanted to play as based on their unique advantages during game play. We prototyped this idea and then tested it out. We found that people became more involved and excited about the game. After this play test, we only needed to change a few things.in order to make our final game fair and enjoyable.
First concept & prototype
Second concept & prototype
Rule book The rulebook played an important role in our game. We designed it to look like an old fashioned boy scout manual. This adds a creepy aspect to our game. Inside the rulebook there are photos of members of our group and class dressed as boy scouts. This adds humor and helps make the information more interesting. We designed the packaging for our game to be as compact as possible. The canvas wraps around the game board and then ties. Also, there is a bag made from canvas to keep all the small pieces.
Development of cards CAMPER Deck
GHOST Deck
CAMPER Deck
Matches
Ominous Advance
Matches
Campers may use an extra die in a fight. On the roll of I or II, the light burns out (discard)
Play to move a ghost Playusing to move ghost of its a dieainstead using a diemove. instead of its normal normal move.
Campers may use an extra die in a fight. On the roll of I or II, the light burns out (discard)
CAMPER Deck `
GHOST Deck
Ominous Advance
Matches
Play to move a ghost using a die instead of its normal move.
Campers may use an extra die in a fight. On the roll of I or II, the light burns out (discard)
Campers may use one extra die in a fight against one ghost. On a roll of 1 or 2 , the light burns out (discard)
GHOST Deck
CAMPER Deck
Matches
GHOST Deck
Ominous Advance
Play to move a ghost using a die instead of its normal move.
Ominous Advance
Use a die to determine how many spaces your ghosts may move.
Final game design Going off our minimal and clean aesthetic we developed from the old boy scout manuals, we designed our board to be simple to understand, with clear divisions of sections. This is important for our game because, player strategy is highly dependent on the players ability to understanding the different sections and the ability navigating them to his or her advantage. In the final set of rules we changed the game play so that campers and ghosts were not directly pitted against one another, in this way we were able to avoid some of the problems we discovered in our play testing, such as ghosts being afraid of campers. We accomplished this by giving the campers the objective of collecting wood to make a bonfire that would drive away the ghosts, and the ghosts the objective of killing all of the campers before they could accomplish their task. In this way the campers would have no incentive to hunt ghosts because they could not be killed, only fended off, and the camper would receive no reward for fending off a ghosts. What this also accomplished, but what we didn’t intentionally plan for, was to create two very different and fun play experiences that the player could choose from depending on what type of game he or she wanted to play.
Reflection Overall we feel as though we succeeded with our game. We created something that people were eager to play. Every single detail was thought through, from the wording in the rule book to making game play completely fair. Making this game challenged us to use everything we knew about design and rely on each other's strengths. We made a great group because we were all dedicated to the project and respected each other's ideas.