Trenches Board Game | Sam Poulter

TRENCHES - THE BOARD GAME

'Trenches' is the end result of a long group project and our first foray into Game Design. The game itself is a tabletop board game, however, there is also a digital counterpart that can be played on a computer. In the beginning stages of the project, we set our aims and goals as the following:

Produce a fun and innovative board game, aimed at the teenager age bracket and up.
Produce an interactive prototype of the game, that adds value to the board game and is in keeping with the game and its themes.

Target Market:
"Trenches" is going to be marketed to a teenage and above age bracket, we will be focusing mainly on the 12 - 24 age bracket. The reason for doing so is that people who fit into this age group are more likely to be interested in the war setting and aspect of the game. These people are also the most likely to own video games consoles and play popular games such as "Call of Duty" and "Battlefield". Military shooters have been some of the most popular game genre's of the past decade so by targeting this age group we’re appealing to their interests and hobbies.

Adding Value:
The additional value of "Trenches" will come in the form of a Flash Game that will be playable on a computer. The added value of that this provides comes from the fact that there is an increasing demand for board games to have some sort of companion app or website that will be used in tandem with, or relevant to the board game.

CONCEPT:

Group Project: Myself, Jake Yard, Joel Warden, Nasser Busaad

September - December 2015

"Trenches" was inspired by many board games for example Battleships, Risk and Chess. The basic idea is to have 2 players, one is attacking and the other is defending if the attacker manages to reach to the defender’s starting point they win. We also added the feature of "Opportunity Cards", which play a big role in how the game plays, they can either be useful and help you or harmful and hinder you. The game is based around World War 1, Trenches and how they changed the face of the war back then. The game is designed around the concept of moving toy soldiers through the trenches in order to get them out the other side, whilst avoiding the opposition soldiers and trying to gain advantages by using the "Opportunity" cards that can be picked up at various points on the board.

The Board was designed to be totally fair to both players and is, therefore, a reflection of one-half. Doing so ensured that no player would have too big of an advantage over the other based on what side of the board they started on. Cards can be picked up by moving around the board and landing on the squares that have an "O" on them. Other elements of the game include the addition of "Tanks" and "Obstacles" that allow both players to obstruct the movement of the opposition. Players will be able to refer back to the rule book to find out all the functions and abilities of these additional features.

DESIGN AND PROTOTYPING:

Throughout the user testing and play sessions, some problems began to arise; mainly to do with the complexity of some rules and the pacing of the game due to having to take time out to read the rules when confused. These were issues that we hadn't really considered or even thought would be problematic in the first place. We realized that this was probably down to the fact that we made the game and the features in the first place, so we never had to read the rules or question anything whilst we played it; because we all knew what to do going into it. This was something that we knew would take some time and careful planning to rectify these issues.

Originally we had obstacle cards in our game. These would allow the defending player to play obstacle markers in defensive positions around his half of the map to prevent the attacking player getting through the trenches. Our game had become quite complicated and took a while to understand. So during the interim presentations, it took groups a long time to get their heads around the rules. Some groups gave up and it became too much effort for them to read and understand all these different rules. It became clear we had created a game that took a good 20 minutes to understand how it works. Games such as monopoly are not games you can understand the rules within 5 minutes. Our game was becoming a game like that. So after the interim, we looked at how we could simplify our game. We removed the obstacles element part of the game to simplify the gameplay. Now our game became similar to chess and had only soldier pieces involved.

MAKING A PLAYABLE GAME:

VIDEO WALKTHROUGH:

Produce the component parts of a new and an innovative new board game, this may include character design, level design, and a series of prototypes that adequately demonstrate your game idea. Communication of your idea is also a very important part of this assignment and care should be taken to ensure that it is presented in a concise and focused way. The game should be well thought out and situate itself within the marketplace against its peers (indie or large developer). Having designed your game, you will develop a board game prototype and a video game prototype.

BRIEF:

FLASH GAME DEVELOPMENT:

We decided we wanted to create a small flash game that is related to the content of the board game. The game will be a space invaders style game replacing the original assets with our own in the theme of WW1. The main idea of our game was a space invaders style game involving enemy parachuters falling to the ground in high numbers. Your objective is to shoot them down before they shoot you or reach you on the ground. The game will take place at night during an attack from the sky. There will be sounds of war happening in the background, and the more enemy troopers you kill the more points you score. We wanted to make the game difficult so it would become more addicting to do well. We were originally going to find an open source space invaders game and just replace the assets. However, we felt it would be better to develop our own game using game design tools. We choose to use Multimedia Fusion 2 as we had a copy of the software enabling us to make our own game.