Through out the past two weeks I have been working in a group of three to create a board game inspired by and for the assassins creed black flag game. To start we decided to brainstorm by creating a bunch of notes and ideas, and soon refined them into a rule book, I was in charge of making all 3D models and designs for the cards while Sam was in charge of creating the rule book and Jess was in charge of making the map.
Firstly before we did anything, we began brainstorming different ideas, we eventually came up with an idea similar to the mathematics games with graphs, using treasure and navigation as a core mechanic, and expanded upon it adding several players and more conflict and objectives for people to fight over.
The picture to the right shows the brainstorming ideas we created in the development stage of the assignment, some ideas were scrapped such as the idea of giving people with better boats additional dices instead of additional movement added on.
After creating the base idea of the game we then moved onto producing products, I began by 3D modelling a lot of models that were meant to be used within the game (but sadly fell through due to 3D printing errors).
I firstly created a series of boats that people would use to move around in, some of these boats would be able to be purchased later in that game, giving a advantage to movement or damage. The method behind me modelling the bases of the ships was by getting a basic box, using edit poly and chamfering all the edges, before bending and mirroring the entire model. I also used soft selecting to make a pinch at the front of the ship, these methods were used for all three models of the ship, and I made sure to make the ships all look distinctly different using different types and sizes of sales, as well as bigging smaller and wider bodies on the ship.
I then moved onto creating different tier models for the towns, and then made a bank and boatshop model, these were done in basic geometry to make sure that the 3D printer would be able to handle them printing.
The towns slowly increase in size and detail to show visually that they are better tier towns
To make the boatshop more apparent I added boats on the side and on top of the shop. Also all small tiles in these models are 150 cm x 150 cm, I did this by clicking on the units setup in 3dsmax and changing it to metrics cm.
Before designing any further we did a first test of the core mechanics of our game on a much smaller board, at first we thought this was a very balanced game but it tended to be boring without anything else going on. Then we came up with the idea of event cards, changing after so many turns making it change certain areas or mechanics in the game.
Card designs:
These are the event cards, these cards will be drawn out every other turn to spice up the board game and add different objectives that will help you win the game. We added these later in the development process after the first beta test where the game felt a bit stale and boring. My favourite cards are the storm card for example, effecting a certain cloud near an island and any ship that is in it giving low rolls high rolls and high rolls low rolls, making it confusing and chaotic. High and low wind just allowed players to move slower or faster around the board, and Town defend and town weakened cards will increase the chance of raiding a town or decrease the chance of raiding a town.
The other types of card is a Mystery card which is given when the player lands on a ? Tile, these cards may or may not help the player, giving a range of buffs or debuffs to actions they will make. Most of these cards are also items which means that they can only be used once before being discarded.
And finally the main objective of the game, this is to get the most gold than anyone else in a number of turns, Gold can be used to buy advantageous ships which will assist you in various ways. as well as this gold will be able to store in the bank.
The games board looks like the following:
I was also finally in charge of decorating the rule book making it, I felt that I should add some tea stains onto the rule book (digitally) to give it a more piratey vibe, and I ended up changing all the text to red making it easier to read.
Finally after creating the rule book I printed all three pages (1 double sided) and then scrunched up all the pages to give it a ruined look with creases before tearing edges around it.
We felt that the game needed to be larger than the 1st playtest as it was very easy to travel between islands and pick up gold, there are some references to our dogs on the islands as well, and we were significantly halted when finishing the game, as production for 3D models and the boards design took longer than expected.
As you can see the picture above shows some cutting off on the map such as where St ringos island is, and shows all the 3D models printed.
In the last playtest printing the main board was a chore as nothing lined up correctly, however the 3D models did arrive on the last day, a lot of things were broken but the core idea was balanced, overall the session was fun and the feedback was the following:
Feedback:
After the last playtest we came to the conclusion that the pacing of the game was incredibly off as well as the grid being way to large to move around on, as the game slowly deterred into stealing from each other as soon as someone respawns. A lot of cooldowns would need to be added to fix the stealing mechanic, and the board would need to be smaller and quicker to move around on to actually make the other mechanics and gameplay in this more worthwhile. Also the card designs I made had the text way too small when printing making it very difficult to read.
Overall if I was to improve the game I would make it more clearer on what cloud effects what island, and show the grids in the clouds, as well as this I would also have more 3D models on the islands and production to have been done sooner. The cards could have been better designed and I believe the storm system was a bit confusing due to no clear visualization of where the storm will appear.
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