Students in the upper school Board Game Club were challenged at the end of January by club sponsors Tex Tourais and Justin Little to create a board game for the Geekway to the West game design contest, and members rose to meet this challenge and beyond. The students were given existing games to bring home, play, and then reconvened to explain the mechanics to other group members. The club met again to pitch ideas for their own game narratives, and some strong ideas emerged. The students began to flesh out mechanics of their games and find ways to “gamify” the narrative and finally the students brought their game prototypes to the club meeting to be tested on each other, bouncing off ideas on how to work out kinks and perfect the mechanics.
Three games in total will be submitted to the contest:
Prison Break: Players are convicts in a prison. They build tunnels and compete against each other to escape first.
Sunken City: Treasure hunters fight monsters in order to acquire loot.
Arson!: One player plays as an arson on the loose. The rest of the players are firefighters, police officers and neighborhood watch members attempting to catch the arson.
“We created the cards for the game by first designing each item and character card by hand, cutting them out, and laminating them with a water design on the back,” said Caroline Abel ‘19, co-creator of Sunken City. “It was difficult at first to design the cards to match our vision. Ultimately, we had a blast developing the artwork for the game.”
The games are now submitted for the first round of the contest, and students will learn if their games have been accepted by March 15th. If so, the creators will be invited to the Geekway to the West convention on May 18-19 to demo their game, and winners will be chosen and announced on May 20th. The grand prize winner will be offered a contract by Indie Boards and Cards for publication of their game.