Game Studies: Modifying a Board Game
22/09/25 - 30/12/25 / Week 1 - Week 14
Brendan Fedya / 0376283
Game Studies / Bachelor of Design
(Hons) in Creative Media / Taylor's University
Game Studies: Modifying a Board Game
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. Lectures
II. Tasks
III. Feedbacks
IV. Reflections
I. LECTURES
Below are points summarized from the lecture notes that is deemed important:
➼ Lecture 1: Core Principles of Game Design
Make Gameplay mechanics that consider the PLEX. This is to keep the players engaged.
Additionally, include storytelling for games could help players feel more immersed.
➼ Lecture 2: Balancing Fun and Educational Elements in Game Design
This should be both entertaining and educational. It will make the learning feel more natural. The Bezier Game during our IVN class is a good example. Once the game serves more purpose than just 'fun', you are getting in track for the educational purpose.
➼ Lecture 3: Design Thinking Process
No more lectures are available.
II. TASKS
➼ Class Exercises: Playing a Board Game
During class, Miss Anis asked us to play a board game to better visualize the ideas that we could have later on, while also reflecting the experience of playing it. We chose the game The Great Game of Britain by IDEAL. We are too lazy to study the rules and everything hence we asked ChatGPT to help us simplify it, and gladly we managed to pick up relatively quick!
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Figure 2.1: Board games in class, Week 1. |
For the rest of the weekly progress, we compiled it into our presentation below:
https://www.canva.com/design/DAG0aO4cKmg/-wfpuNlfDNgWAVWKDt4VHA/edit
➼ Going to a Board Game Cafe!
To look for inspiration four our game ideation, we went to a board game cafe together and tried several boardgames on our own. Without us realizing, we became more attentive on the game components —thinking how they should be made and how they should be presented. It was a really fun experience as it seems like we are learning through playing, so we don't feel the burden that much.
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| Figure 2.2: Board game cafe, Week 2. |
➼ Game Ideation
My groupmates came up with an idea on improvising a current board game — Quartett. They wanted to make the game more unpredictable, giving them 2 sides that could be switched when triggered through a die roll. I then came up with the theme behind the game that could be implemented, in which I came up with 2 sides that could represent hero and villain versions, set in a medieval theme. Some additional mechanics such as making the sets to have an additional requirement to 'lock' it.
Quartett is a game where a person must collect 4 cards of the same type to complete a set, gaining points and race to complete as many sets as they can.
➼ Presentation day!
We prepared all the rules, game mechanics, and components for us to propose during our presentation in class. Here are our presentation slides:
➼ Refinement & Playtests
Throughout the weeks, we spent our time doing playtests with other people while also refining based on the problems that we had occurred. We compiled it through a spreadsheet so that it's easier to identify between different stages:
In the meantime, we also played the games from other groups, giving them feedback through structured reports on what to improve and had a lot of fun overall.
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| Figure 2.3: Board game cafe, Week 7. |
➼ Game Designing
Actually designing the game to make it look pretty is irrelevant to our grades, as the grading is only determined by the playful experiences that could be leveraged through the mechanics — but we still wanted to do it anyways. We would definitely enjoy playing more and feel more fulfilled if we were to design our very first game.
So, I then begin to design the cards, the characters, alongside the weapons. And yes, through the help of gen AI I managed to pull it off through countless extremely long prompts. I guess I should not complain about this since I'm not drawing them myself anyways, entertainment design students will flame me so bad if I do.
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| Figure 2.4: Game visual design, Week 9. |
➼ Refinement & Playtests: Part II
Fast forward to the upcoming weeks, we are still constantly refining our mechanics, a major change we made is we reduced the number of cards to make the game shorter, hoping to maintain the excitement of the players .We've observed this problem through our previous playtests and thought that it should be addressed.
On week 12, we finally did our final playtest, printed out the cards and asked volunteers to play the game. It's our last touchpoint with our classmates, and probably our last chance to try their games as well.
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| Figure 2.5: Final touchpoint in class, Week 12. |
➼ Final Presentation
After we completed everything, what's left is to prepare for our final presentation. We thought about ideas on how to present our game well, which then my groupmates proposed an idea — creating a demo gameplay while explaining the mechanics along the way. This will help people to understand easily, as they can learn through visuals.
We met up in campus to create the demo gameplay:
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| Figure 2.6: Last group meeting, Week 13. |
After that, video editing was mostly done by Sacha. She and I also took part in recording the voiceovers for the video, while the other team members contributed to creating the final slides.
➼ Final Submission
All of our submission files, include:
- Gameplay mechanic reviews from different groups of students
- Iterative playtest report
- Game proposal slides
- Game manual
- Weekly progress slides
- Final presentation video
are compiled in the Microsoft Teams folder that Miss Anis has created according to our respective groups.
III. FEEDBACKS
‣ Week 2
Exercise 1 is done! Proceed to submit.
‣ Week 4
Prototype could work as a Lo-Fi, some aspects to consider for the cs what if the players lie?
‣ Week 6
Use media that could make the die randomize properly.
‣ Week 9
Consider reducing the number of cards to play.
‣ Week 10
Game is considered quite complicated, hence utilize visuals to easily explain the mechanics through its instructions.
‣ Week 13
Presentation could involve describing about the changes made first, before going into demo gameplay.
Out of all design modules up until now, this could be the most interesting one yet. What other modules asks us to go to a board game cafe to play? I guess I don't feel that much pressure in this particular module because I really liked playing games a lot. We are doing this while also learning how these playability aspects effect the 'fun' of the game — deeply considering the playful experiences, which can definitely helps us in developing our tabletop game that we want according to our plans. In order to create a good user interaction with the design, the users must take part in the testing hence easily knowing which aspects that still could be improved.
In our previous classes, we hardly even interact with our classmates. Hence it was a very valuable experience for all of us as we could try different game inventions from other groups as well, it really helps us bond with our classmates and it finally felt like we're truly in the same class.
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