Black Liquid - Play & Games
4 mins
Board Game Log
Over the last few weeks me and my group have been meeting up and designing our Board game concept “Black Liquid”. This has been a really interesting project and I have really enjoyed the idea of working as a collective team to create a new game concept. Creating a board game is quite different to designing a piece of software, as you have to think about the fact that every component that you design for the game, is going to be something actually experiences by the players themselves. This is different to software, where there is a lot of logic work going on in the background that is not seen by the user to create the result of what they are experiencing.
We started the design process by coming up with a concept and setting of what it would be based around. We knew that we had to base it around a current cultural, political or economic issue. With this in mind, we began researching news websites, looking at what’s been in the news recently. We came across an article talking about setting a minimum price upon alcohol products in Wales. This was quite an interesting story and so it made us start to think about the theme of alcohol, and how we could base a game around that. After a few different ideas, Liam came up with the idea of the Government placing an entire ban on alcohol and making it illegal to sell or purchase. This was an interesting idea that quickly sparked more ideas from it. We quickly thought about the potential of the players being part of a gang for the “black market of alcohol”. We stuck with this idea of a theme and quickly started thinking about how the game would be played.
With the idea of you being part of a gang, we first thought that you would be playing against the government, trying to work to make as much money as you can from illegally selling alcohol. We soon thought that the game would be more interesting if there was more competitiveness to it against the other players as oppose to you all working together. So we decided that each player would be part of a different black market gang and they would all be fighting for the most control over the black market for their gang. We then thought about how you would individually have more control over the market than other players. This was decided to be whoever has the most money when the game is over. There would be event cards that are drawn at the beginning of each round. These would have an effect on that current round. This would also be how the end of the game was decided. With all of the different events that can take place, there would be one card in the deck that states the government has unbanned alcohol, ending the game at the point of this being drawn. To make sure the game lasts for a decent amount of time, this card will always be placed somewhere in the back half of the deck. The further back this card is, the more rounds of play there will be. We also implemented in some other features like the ability to trade with other players in the game by using their player cards which have a value for trading. These can also be used to double cross someone you are trading with and steal their trade. During the process, I also came up with the idea of using machinary as an item for the players which will effect their production in terms of how much alcohol they produce per turn. The more machinary upgrades you have, the more production you will have.
After doing a concept presentation of the game, we have discovered that the theme we have chosen seems to draw too far away from a current reality, when in fact we need it to be relevant to modern day issues. Based on this feedback, we have decided to change the whole theme for the game from the idea of banning alcohol, to something new. The first best step towards doing this, we felt was to write down all of our different mechanics from the current game, and then decide if any other theme we choose would still allow these mechanics to work with it. I think from a first look, we have decided to potentially get rid of the idea of having workers that do actions in the game for the player. We have also decided to get rid of the end game event card, meaning we will have to come up with some other way to end the game.
The next step is to now come up with some other theme ideas and try fit them with what we believe to be some good game mechanics. One idea we have had so far is perhaps the idea of cyber-security and hacking.
References http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-41682666
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