Our team created the board game, Moon Escape. The game is a mix of ideas from Catan, Monopoly, Sorry!, and what we personally love about games – competition, strategy, and chaos!
We began our process with an idea that makes our game unique – what if the board changes?
Our first challenge was to build this idea into something playable. We defined some rules around the changing board, like when the board will rotate, what happens when the board rotates, how the game is made playable, and how many players the game allows.
Preparation
We defined what we wanted our players to experience when playing the game and in what setting we envision people playing the game (most likely at a game night). We also needed to create a reason for why the board rotates, some kind of story around the game’s rules & mechanics. So, we came up with the context of “escaping the moon”. We were inspired to use a hexagonal board and brainstormed ideas by whiteboarding virtually.
Initial Game
- 37 hexagonal piece board and players need 3 broken ship pieces, 3 moon rocks, and 1 map to get off the board
- If you land on a piece that a player is on, you can steal a piece and move that player
- 37 direction cards with 6 cards each for 6 directions and 1 gravity controller card
- The outer board rotates when a player lands on a ‘bomb’ hexagonal tile piece
Material Making
While preparing the materials, we realized that the border edge of the moon was difficult to make, such that it is rotatable. So, we made 6 more direction cards with a slightly different design to indicate the rotatable cards. We forgot to make the ‘bomb’ tiles.
First Playthrough
Antrita played the game with her roommates who graciously offered to help. During this first playthrough, we discovered a lot of the flaws with our game rules. We also realized that there were some implicit rules that we took for granted, but the players were unsure about.
Issues that arose include:
- Who starts first?
- How do you indicate what piece is which player’s, once it’s been ‘stolen’?
- Can we play multiple direction cards at once?
- When and how does the outer board rotate?
- Although this was supposed to be determined by the ‘bomb’ cards, since we forgot to make them, this was a question that came up
- Should the players be allowed to know what the tiles are before they land on a tile?
- What happens when a player goes off the board? How do they come back?
Overall, the game was well-liked by Antrita’s friends. It felt competitive, required some strategic thinking, and also bred some chaos, which were all feelings we wanted the game to cultivate. However, the game took a long time to end, and after they reached the 1hr 30 minute mark, the players decided to end the game rather than play it out until there’s a winner. So, we also discovered through the first playthrough that our game did not fit the 15-30 minute playable mark.
During the first playthrough, these are the game rules that Antrita and her friends agreed upon:
- Players only move one tile at a time; they cannot stack the direction cards to move multiple tiles
- If a player lands on a piece that is not owned by another player, they can claim that piece
- If a player lands on a piece that is owned by another player, but the owner is not on that piece at that moment, and that piece is a resource, the player can ‘rob’ the piece from the owner and claim it as theirs
- If a player lands on a piece that is owned by another player, but the owner is on that piece at that moment, the player may rob any other piece that the owner owns, except the one that both the player and the owner currently stand on (provided this piece is a resource)
- If a player is standing on a special piece and another player lands there, they may apply the instruction on the player already standing on the special piece to another location or on other players
- If a player is standing on a special piece and another player lands there, they may apply the instruction on the player already standing on the special piece to another location or on other players
Some additional comments were:
- The hexagonal tiles with dry-erase don’t look aesthetically pleasing and also ruin the element of suspense
- They also smear easily
- Need a way to keep track of a players’ tiles- maybe they can build a ‘house’ on their tile
Second Playthrough
We met up to discuss the results of the first playthrough and make modifications. We scrapped the rules that Antrita and her friends had used in the interest of making the game simpler to play. Three big changes we made to the game play were:
- Instead of the hexagonal tiles holding the resources, we introduced little wooden tokens that hold the resource pieces – these would be flipped every time a player lands on a tile
- The tiles would either be blank or have a special power, such as “move a player” or “skip a player”; a player would have to flip both the tile and the token on it when they land to reveal these
- Some tokens would have the “bomb” property, but there will be 5 extra playable cards that have the property as well
- When there are 2-4 players, only 19 tiles are in play; but when there are 5-6 players, all 37 tiles are in play (“expansion pack”)
Material Making
Third Playthrough
Donaven played the game again with some friends and realized that the game still took longer than 30 minutes to end. To address this, we decided to simplify the win condition.
And that’s how we built Moon Escape!
Author(s): Antrita Manduva & Donaven Craddock
