This week we had to make use of a brainstorm technique of mixing and matching. We had to select a few of the serious goals from a game already presented in class. Then we had to invent a game that addressed those goals, and used some of the magic of the board game we choose to analyze. We had the freedom to make it an electronic game, so that you had the benefits of things computers and programming can do. Here is my response:
Game Title: Finding Shrimps
Serious Goals: Teaching the importance of community and shared resources. Building on the concept of Real Lives where you face challenges and thus you make difficult, high-stake choices that lead to your success, or failure. This also takes the serious goals of Wolfquest and teaches about Sea Ecology and how the fisherman are effecting the balance of it. You get a peek of a fisherman’s life, his community and also deal with larger problems of global warming and pollution of sea.
Story: You are a Fisherman in a small fishing community in Bombay. You have very few resources to yourself and it is a question of your survival against large fishing trailers and fishing companies with the state of the art technologies. You have a daily fixed quota of fuel which allows you to go only 5 miles into the sea to fish. You do not have GPS or Satellite phones. But you have hundreds of years of knowledge of the sea that is possessed by your community only and it is your duty to now grow your community by making correct decisions.
Player objective: The objective of the player is to grow as a community. So the objective of the game(LUDO) has been changed a little. Now your objective is not to finish the game by reaching “Home”. Instead, you would like to reach the center of the board by traversing the whole distance so that your community grows. Each time you reach “Home” you add one more person to the community and thus add to the growth.
Description: This is a combination of real-time strategy game on a board. The basic structure of LUDO is retained. There are four players with 4 pawns each to begin with. They can team up or play as 4 individuals. There is some addition to the props. There will be an addition of a stack of cards that you pick up when you step on the respective room. There will be additional objects like Extra fuel, Satellite phone, GPS, Range of boats from semi-specialized to super-specialized trailers. The game progresses by rolling a dice and is turn based.
Goals and Gameplay: The crux of the game is to realize the dramatic arc. They need to realize that “Unity is Strength”. You can only compete with stronger opponents when you are united and act as a group. In a city, people come together to share some basic amenities and resources. When you carpool, you not only save money but you are saving the environment too. Similar concept of carpooling and city life has been incorporated to make people realize that you can grow as a community by sharing resources and in turn help the planet.
The game mechanics are designed in a fashion so that you are stronger when you move in a group. Mechanics of chinese checker has been fused in LUDO. Now you can kill a person by either stepping on the pawn or by jumping over. When your pawn is moving in isolation, it is easier to jump over but when a group is moving together , you will need to get a higher number on your dice to jump over and the probability of higher number is less. You can only jump over weaker opponents and not stronger opponents. For e.g., a player with a small boat cannot jump over a Catamaran or Fishing trailer. So when he crosses over stronger opponents, he gets to buy extra equipment that would add to his resources. On landing on designated stops, you get to flip cards and can either be rewarded with shrimps, tools or be penalized in the form of loss of equipment or pawns. So not just strategy but fate comes into play too, similar to the lives of fishermen. You can strategize but the sea might have a Tsunami planned for you (concept from Real Lives).
Through all these uncertainties, you have to grow as a community. More pawns added to your community will make you stronger and you grow as a community like in the case of Rise of Nations and thereby suppress other communities (i.e fishing trailers). The game does not have a definite end. At any point of time the player with largest community and equipment wins.
Visibility: The game is completely visible except fate, reward, penalty cards. This allows for equal opportunity for all players to win the game and a balancing act takes place.
Board game OR Digital: I would like this to be a board game as well as a flash based game. But there are some disadvantages of both and each media can compliment other. The board game is tangible but the back-story in print form might not gel well with the game. The flash game can have a good focus on back-story but the tangibility of the game would be compromised. So ideally I would like a digital board game, something like Microsoft Surface.
