Atomic Garden Interactive

The Board And so we come to this. The hideous visage of what was once going to be the centrepiece of my great ambitions now laid bare for all to see. The board is, in a word 'ugly' and in three 'really fucking ugly'. This thing somehow fails to convey effectively the theme, tone, overall aesthetic or even where to put all the f'in cards. It is both cluttered and empty. It's vacant of any value beyond its small accomplishment of having evenly spaced tiles for the players to move around. The obstacle markers are unclear at best. The 'rooms' are not rooms they are unaligned, sickeningly bordered copies of the tiles that convey nothing of their nature past what colour card you are meant to draw from and the victory markers are so barely there that I almost forgot to mention them. Overall this board is a 3/10, it's just functional enough so as to no make me physically sick but not so functional that I would call it good enough.  Illustrator my nemesis. Or...

The Theme I had intended to create an atmosphere of appalled incredulity with capitalists and their dogma and use the chaotic expression of the proponents of free thought, namely anarchist as a tool to force the players to grapple with the crushing, mundane and defeating nature of bureaucratised meritocratic society. Which can be thought of as a long-winded way of saying 'this shit sucks' in reference to the current state of affairs and 'what if it didn't have to be the way it currently is?'  in reference to systems that are more in line with something like anarchism.  What I actually created in my view is a game in which the system you interact with heavily encourage you to come to the conclusion that both sides are: Equal, in either or both their viability to organise society Only cosmetically different, in that they function on the same axis using the same tool for the same tasks. Rigid, you are unable to alter anything about the side you are on or the other side...

The Cards This is probably the element I feel that best represents what I was striving for with this board game. They are both clear in their rules and evocative in their theme and flavour text. The flavour helps aid in the player's comprehension of the rules and the rules reinforce the comedic nature of the cards, creating to my mind the perfect balance of form and function. I also wove element of non-linear storytelling throughout some of the cards creating miniature stories that over the course of one or more games the players will piece together giving them both a motive for further play and an incentive to engage with the item card mechanic. Moving forwards I really want to try to continue to incorporate narrative elements into the mechanicals systems of my games. Telling a story through the actions available to the players and allowing the player's actions to create narratives is something I value incredibly highly and I feel at least in parts my use of narrative mixed me...

Doom  (and not the good kind) I had a host of problems all arise at the same time near the end of this project. Some were very much miscalculations on my part as to the time certain tasks would take and others were simply out of my control although I should have given myself more wriggle room to work with. Firstly I vastly underestimated both the time I would need to make the board in adobe illustrator, in addition to vastly overestimating my competency with the program. Every minute of creating the 'final' version of the board you see here was agony. The circles flatly refused to centre on each or anything else for that matter, making it near impossible to create the segments around the edge to create the tiles the players move on. This also meant that the coloured rooms that player are meant to pick items up from are not close to being lined up. All of these horrible errors could have been avoided had I done two things. TWO THINGS I WILL DO NEXT TIME!. Thing, the first: Creat...

Creating a prototype I created a clearer prototype in photoshop to help myself visualize the actual playing of the game. This really helped uncover some of the things I had missed in my initial designs. One of the things I had missed was a way of displaying where the obstacles would be. This prototype also made me realise that I had no way of tracking victory points. In future, I think I will attempt to produce a prototype such as this earlier so I can playtest as soon in the design process as possible as this was incredibly helpful.

Working Title : Escape the Duality The Hook The world has been regimented and ordered for optimal efficiency. There is no war between nations, factions or tribes. Everyone is provided with a place to eat, a place to work and a place to sleep. As a result of this productivity has rocketed to an all-time high. Value is being created at a rate hitherto unthinkable by mankind.  However, there is a growing segment of the workforce that inexplicably feels the need to disrupt our work.  They eat whenever they want to, they sleep for more than the optimal 7.45 hours and they constantly miss their value production targets. These (insert name of rebel faction) are a stain on the exquisite fabric of our society. As with all blemishes they must be (removed) for the good of all. Above Text Not Final With this flavour text, I'm attempting to help the players by framing the rest of the information they hear about the game within this context of big bad authority crushing the little guy. This...

Basic rules concept 2 teams of 2 players Co-op Competitive Each team tries to escape by doing 'tasks' 'Tasks' consist of Rock paper scissors where every player throws in a rock, paper or scissors card, the team that initiated the task wins if they get *3* of a kind Collected 'items' from the board to complete a required set Once all tasks have been completed the players rush to the escape pods The teams are split so that each member starts on each side of the board Two different board ideas. 'Sync nodes' would be the 'tasks' Interesting consequences of the rules The modularity of this game idea means that the 'Tasks' or mini-games can be swapped out and replaced without affecting any of the themes or narrative elements. There are many levels of symmetry from the number of player to the team sizes to the form of the board. The elements of this game idea could easily systemise and convey a multitude of aesthetic and thematic ideas. It piggy...

Basic Rules concept Players have a set of blocks like Tetris blocks Each player has their own grid board They each take it in turns to place a block on their own grid When they place their block they announce one square that the block occupies the other players must place one of their blocks in such a way that it also occupies that square Blocks can be placed in any orientation as long as there is no unsupported overhang Elimination: each player is eliminated if their tower reaches higher than *4* blocks. Last player standing wins Interesting consequences of the rules The Players are both trying to place their own blocks in a manner which lets them make the most effective use of their space while also trying to force the opponent to place their block in the least space-efficient way. Since the location of at least part of the block is chosen by the opponents this means that there is no way for the player to simply build in different parts of the board, they are forced into conflict...

As the first part of our interaction unit, we are designing a board game using the theme symmetrical. The game will be for 2-4 players. I have to use iterative design practices to achieve this which means lots of playtesting. I started by trying to break down the theme of symmetrical into slightly more digestible parts so that figuring out how and where I could leverage the theme would be simpler. Symmetry is an interesting concept as it has a rougher common meaning and a much more precise mathematical meaning. Commonly it can mean anything from reflection, pattern, harmony to balance, whereas the mathematical meaning is that invariant under some transformations.  There is also the fact that different types of symmetry also perceptibly don't offer the same amount of symmetry, for example, reflectional symmetry is what most people think of when you mention symmetry as its the most common type seen in mirrors and commonly used in board games such as chess, but offers the lo...