Maze of a designer is a board game that I made for entering the HKU. The assignment was to make a game about game design. I still put it on my portfolio because it is a game where I’m still proud of and it’s a board game that works. The goal of the game is to reach the finish line first with 25 points. To get these points faster you sometimes have to decide to take a detour or take your chances with a random card.

My input

For this project, I did everything myself. I started with paper prototypes to test how the game works. The game has changed a lot and is completely different from the first paper prototype simple because I had to change so much for this game to work. without 1 strategy being too easy.

Screenshots

How to play

Your goal is to reach the finish with 25+ points to win. To get points you have to stand on a blank space (1 point), a Blue space (points stand on the board), or a green space that gives you a random card that can increase or decrease your points. But beware of the red zones these zones will decrease your points based on the number that stands on the board. Should you happen to stand on a red square with a ! sign then you lose all your points.

Each player starts by the flag. The player that has the best teeth get to go first. You roll a dice and you must take as many steps as the dice say but you can choose your direction(except backward). If you reach a dead-end your turn ends there but you still get/lose the points on that stand on that square.

Design

At first, I found it very hard to think of a concept for a board game let alone the idea that it has to do something with game design. So I dropped by my local game store a few weeks when they had an open game night where you could play some board games for free. During these nights I played a lot of different board games and saw what most of them did right or wrong. What I found most noticeable is that in a lot of board games there is an ultimate strategy that makes your winning chances rice up. The first time you play a game you won’t notice it and try your hardest to win with the knowledge you know. But when you played a game for a 3rd, 4th, or 5th time you noticed that there are certain strategies. To win easier.

My first idea for the game was a game where people had to work together to complete a game/the game. each player has a certain skill (Game Designer, Artist, Developer, Sound Designer.) To win this game you need to collect a certain amount of points. Depending on the game that you need to develop. But after testing this idea I found out that the game was boring and not challenging. The only thing that could screw things up was the board and you also had very little control over it. People also weren’t satisfied when they won because it was more by luck than by skill.

So after a few rounds of testing, I decided to put players against each other so there is a definite winner. I also scraped the idea of working together with other groups and focusing on the designers alone. I changed the board to a maze so that people have more control over where they could go.

After testing this idea a few times I decided to add cards to the game. When you stand on a question mark you can pick a card these cards have most of the time a good effect but can sometimes have a bad effect. This represents that you sometimes have to take risks to get good ideas.

The concept of the game is now that you have to come up with good ideas before the deadline arrives. But to have a good idea you must do research. The maze represents that you can get very fast to the finish with little points but to get to the finish with enough points you’re gonna need to take a few detours.