Lego Exercise Primary | Design

July 15, 2009

PRIMARY | DESIGN

CONCEPTION The assignment was to use the following materials to make a playable game in ~5 hours : mechanical set, multi-coloured Play Dough, paper and pen For the first two hours, I experimented with the mechanical set to get a hang of how it works, first of all, and to determine what elements can contribute to gameplay. I ended up with a wind-up motorbike. When doing an exercise like this, I find it useful to write down all the gameplay possibilities provided by each material Play Dough - Creation of terrain and other objects or beings - Creation of tokens or pieces, for example, dice or chess pieces - Use of the different colours like in Mastermind, for example - As a base to insert pegs into so that they dont move or as a dart-board-like surface Mechanical Set - Making a vehicle using the wind-up engine to use for drag-racing, aiming games, etc - Catapult / shooting / aiming using the wind-up engine or rubber bands - Spinning dial using the wind-up engine to serve as a Random Number Generator - Using the various pieces as tokens - Creating a mini-board with readymade slots using some of the flat, perforated pieces - Using the rod-like pieces to make a make the tallest tower without it falling or a Pick Up Sticks type of game In the mechanical set, I found the wind-up engine of particular interest and decided to use it The perforated, flat pieces in the mechanical set would provide an ideal surface for a board game Multicoloured balls could easily be made using the play-dough Finally, a wind-up dial or pointer could easily be integrated into the board to add a RNG or luck element

UBIsoft, Pune / SupInfo Game Advanced

Harshal Chheda

Lego Exercise Primary | Design

July 15, 2009

INTRODUCTION Name Target audience Players Playtime Genre Primary Ages 5+ 2 ~30 mins Mechanical Board-game

Primary is a board-game of strategy and luck, where you try to capture as many slots on the board as you can whilst using the roll of the spinning pointer to maximum advantage. GAMEPLAY The objective of the game is to capture as many slots as you can with your team balls GAME BOARD AND PIECES

Top

Spinning pointer Quadrants Slots for balls Legs

Bottom Bracing Pointer wind-up engine

UBIsoft, Pune / SupInfo Game Advanced

Harshal Chheda

Lego Exercise Primary | Design

July 15, 2009

Balls Primary balls (universal)

White team balls

Black team balls

HOW TO PLAY At the outset, players chose the white or black team and receive team balls of their teams colour and 10 each of the red, yellow and blue primary balls, which are universal. The game begins and players take turns, with the white team starting first. At the beginning of each turn, the player rotates the pointer a minimum of 360 clockwise and releases it the pointer spins and then stops in one of the quadrants of the board. TIP: To avoid knocking over the balls on the board while winding back the pointer, use its orange part. The player then places one primary ball into a slot on that quadrant, which finishes the turn, after which the other player spins the pointer, and so on. A string is a (not necessarily straight) line of 1 red, 1 yellow and 1 blue ball (any order); wherein the line has no gaps or other balls in its path and is entirely in 1 quadrant. When a player places a primary ball such that it creates a string, he can replace that entire string with his team balls. When a player cant or doesnt want to place any balls in his turn, he can pass. When 3 consecutive passes take place, or all the slots on the board are occupied, the game ends and whoever has the most team balls on the board wins.

UBIsoft, Pune / SupInfo Game Advanced

Harshal Chheda

Lego Exercise Primary | Design

July 15, 2009

MECHANICS STRINGS A string is a (not necessarily straight) line of 1 red, 1 yellow and 1 blue ball (any order); wherein the line has no gaps or other balls in its path and is entirely in 1 quadrant. Shown below are example quadrants with valid strings and their transformation into white team balls.

A player can capture multiple strings if the primary ball he places completes two strings independently. This is shown below. Also, the Primary Ball Involvement rule must be followed.

UBIsoft, Pune / SupInfo Game Advanced

Harshal Chheda

Lego Exercise Primary | Design

July 15, 2009

OTHER RULES 5-per-quadrant rule: There can be a maximum of 5 primary balls of the same colour in each quadrant, e.g. if there are 4 red balls in that quadrant, the player can place another red ball in it, but, if there are already 5 red balls in the quadrant, the player cannot place any more red balls there. Primary ball involvement rule: For a string to be captured, the primary ball placed by the player has to be a part of that string. Any strings that are uncaptured due to player error will be treated as normal primary balls. Joker: The player can treat one of his pre-existing team balls per turn as a joker (primary ball of any colour) and form strings using it. The team ball with the black star has been used as a joker here.

In the eventuality of the pointer landing along a yellow bar between quadrants, i.e. it is unclear what quadrant the pointer is in, the player must spin the pointer again. Team balls are unlimited.

UBIsoft, Pune / SupInfo Game Advanced

Harshal Chheda

Lego Exercise Primary | Design

July 15, 2009

OUTCOME After the initial conception, the idea underwent a few tweaks to aid smooth gameplay. Quadrants: I feel the quadrant system, aided by the 5-per-quadrant rule, negates the possibility of same-coloured primary balls aggregating in one corner of the board and clogging up the games flow. Spinning pointer: Adds a luck element which, in my opinion, makes the game more engaging and unpredictable. The Primary Ball Involvement makes the rules totally unambiguous and solves, in one line, issues that would require a lot of rules to clarify. This was made clear during the short focusgroup phase. The joker rule makes the game more fluid and, of course, faster which is good because the initial play time of the game was too long. The final design for the construction of the board, along with the wind-up engine, pointer and all the legs and supports turned out to be surprisingly solid and stable. I feel that there are very few to no loopholes in the game and am happy with what the play time and engagement levels finally turned out to be. The feedback I received is that it is a good game and neatly made overall. I am personally quite satisfied with the final result.

UBIsoft, Pune / SupInfo Game Advanced

Harshal Chheda