"Miner Madness: Dig Into Code Theory" Children's Board Game
Collaboration | Marketing Team Leader | Assistant Product Director
"Meaningful Play" - Best Student Project 2018 Award
01
Brief
Miner Madness is a co-op board game aimed at teaching critical and logical thinking. The players act as a team of miners that must navigate obstacles and avoid danger to dig up hidden treasures deep within the Earth. The goal is to teach children of all ages how to use logic, critical thinking skills, and systematic cognition in a creative and entertaining manner.
The team must work together to decide which directions to take, collect gems, and find the raft to cross the river. These choices culminate at the end of the game when players must use what they've gathered to pay the "Toll Troll" and win the game. Keys to successful gameplay include communicating with the other team members and creating functions to enhance the game and progress faster.
02
Our Audience & What We Learned
For this study, our Producers and Marketing Team worked in collaboration with local public schools in Grand Rapids, MI, to begin our project. Children ages 8 - 13 were the key focus group. This age group was chosen on the basis where children have further developed interests and focus on what they find most engaging in and outside of school.
Here were our major takeaways:
1) Technology is a major part of this generation and it has changed the way that schools have taught children. As such, computer and system solutions such as coding has become more common in classrooms.
2) Children love video games. One of, if not considered THE most popular game at the time of Miner Madness's development was Minecraft, by Mojang Studios. Minecraft is a sandbox game designed around crafting tools in an open procedurally generated world, enforcing the player to think critically to survive and explore.
03
Inspirational Analysis
Through the development phase, it was clear early on that Minecraft served as the perfect basis to build off of. Though it is an easy game to learn, it can also be a difficult game to master. It is entirely possible to use all the diverse building blocks to create functioning mechanisms all from crafting and combining the right materials. The game encourages critical thinking all while providing entertainment through imagination and exploration.
With this in mind, our Marketing Team began to focus on some of Minecraft's core fundamentals, and what we can utilize as well.
04
Competitive Analysis
05
Gameplay
Gameplay went through different iterations very early on, with our Concept Team pitching different approaches to how the game should flow. Will the game be a Linear game with a single path, or more open Grid? Should it be competitive or cooperative? Most of all, how can we make it fun and replay-able? Ultimately we settled on the following ground work for how the game would play out.
The Players
- Singular Character that the Players would work together with to move across the board to solve puzzles, developing cooperation and communication skills.
The Map
- Standard Square Grid design with open exploration, no forced path or linearity giving the players freedom to approach the goal in any way.
- Tokens scattered throughout in any randomized order and placement that could contain Resources, Tools, or Traps.
The Obstacles
- Endgame Boss that the Players would have to beat to finish the game.
- Secondary Boss that acts as the Game's "Timer", creating a sense of urgency to accomplish the goals as quickly and efficiently as possible.
- Environmental Puzzles that require specific tools to solve and access more parts of the map.
- Traps that could impede progress.
The Rules
- Players must draw a set number of cards that give the player movement inputs and actions, based off of IF - THEN functions to accomplish tasks.
- Inputs and Actions Cards can be performed in any order from the hand drawn to optimize their turn. Cards can be used immediately to execute quick turns or can be accumulated to perform more complex solutions at once.
The Goals
- Collect Enough Resources to Beat Boss
- Reach the End of the Map.
06
World Building & Story
Our Creative Team loved the idea of resource collecting and cave diving from Minecraft and chose to develop a setting that takes inspiration from the idea of spelunking in a fantasy setting.
The World
A vast, dark cave full of treasures and traps that our Heroes find themselves stuck in. Throughout the cave our Heroes will come across glimmering gems, sticky situations, and perilous problems to solve.
The Heroes
Penelope and Owen are two young spunky adventurers on a school trip who find themselves trapped in a world full of treasures and trolls. They were aged to be roughly the same as our audience to relate with them further.
The Bad Guys
The Toll Troll is the Boss that blocks the exit to the cave, and the only way through him is to collect enough gems to pay his Toll before he lets our Heroes through.
The Time Troll isn't as forgiving, as he makes sure that our Heroes don't dawdle too long in the cave, or it's going to be Game Over!
07
My Work & Design Process
Our Marketing Team and Illustration Team then collaborated together on expanding the work set by the Creative Team, creating prototypes for play tester sessions and finalized pieces to present to our Producers before the deadline. We designated different parts of the workload for specific team members to focus on.
Below is a comprehensive list of my work and contributions during the Prototype & Design Process.
Playing Cards
My first task was working on the card designs, specifically the MOVE Cards as they need to visually convey their function of moving the player.
The IF, THEN, EVENT, and MOVE Cards each have a certain kind of role within the gameplay and have been given a color scheme to keep the rules and function of cards separated from each other. The exception to this design rule is the IF and THEN cards, as these two functions are performed in tandem with each other (i.e. if a Player pulls an IF card, it is followed with a THEN card to perform the action as written on the cards.)
MOVE Cards are how the player needs to move around, with Arrows designating the Player's Movement on a tile. While the Forward Arrow and Exclamation Icons are self explanatory, the most unique icon design came with deciding how to convey turning left and right while keeping the player in place. The first iteration proposed was a 90 degree angle but through our first prototype testing the play testers moved up and to the direction of the tile rather than stay in place. By using a circular designed it was easier for the play testers to know to just "spin in place" on their current tile.
Board
I developed rough wireframes of the board early on, and from the layout chosen I later assisted with illustrating the final board game art.
Two wireframes were made, the first was to accommodate putting cards down in a spot and a small box with quick tips to help describe game flow, and another designed on using more of the grid space to make a more expansive game. We chose Iteration 2.
From there we collaborated on the different illustration elements and how the board functions both visually and through a gameplay stand point.
Our first play test on how the board layout would work was met with mixed results. Key criticism early on was where the Players were very lost where to start. Even though the tokens could be laid out in any way the player would like, it was hard to convey a general starting point. The basic grid line felt uninspired, and visually clashed up against the cracks vector, making some tiles were hard to see.
One design and gameplay element that was noted was the tiles too close to the Timer Tracks and some of the younger players were scared about traveling too close to the Time Troll and getting a Game Over.
After some visual overhauls gathered from both play tester and Producer feedback we settled on a final design, with wooden post signs, unique tiling, a light source coming from a space in the wall and a rock formation dividing the Player from the Time Troll.
Version 3 Design
Final Board Design
Rulebook Layout & Design
While I was wrapping up the prototype on the board, I was handed the task of picking up the work on the Rulebook's entire graphic design layout. The material for the writing was already completed by then but the pages and layouts had not. I spent time on the side making sure that the rulebook was finished by the allotted deadline with time left over for future adjustments using feedback from play testers.
A .pdf of the Rulebook can be found here.
Website Header
An illustrated piece for the Miner Madness website following the style guide set by our Illustration Team.
Box Layout & Design
The most important task with creating the Box's layout and design was conveying as much as possible with a restricted amount of space. We wrote quick excerpts that nail key gameplay elements, provided a visual demo of how one could lay out their game, the cards involved, all the kinds of tokens at the players disposal, and illustrations showing off our crew of characters.
This was one of the final productions needed to completed. As I was placed in charge of my team's workflow and management, it was crucial to see through on their contributions being finished on time and providing me with final art and materials that would have to be pieced together for marketing and mass physical production.
08
From Prototype to Production, Play Testing, &
Conclusion
For our second round of play testing we had finished up producing all the materials required to fully flesh out the game to the fullest. For our first major and future physical production we went through a Production Site that focuses on making board games. Every piece of work that was handed to me was double checked and revised so that the files were "print ready" for the website according to their criteria.
Once we received the second prototype iteration of the entire board game, we began further user testing with local schools to hear more feedback. This second round of feedback proved useful as we were able to tweak the game's final rules for an overall better flow of gameplay, and overall reception to the new improvements was met overwhelmingly positive.
By the end of the semester the product was complete. The Game Crafter's site was updated with the final pieces and we had shipped a few free copies of the game to the same local schools for use in their classroom as well as demonstrate the game at conventions and to the public. My contributions to the project were immense and greatly appreciated by my professor, and even earned me a job position in my Major's department as a work study.
The game is currently in circulation through KCAD collaborating with schools across the country and overseas as well teaching children the fundamentals of code theory!
Susan Bonner, Co-Producer & Director with Ahmed Hossam and Sara El-Kady, Founders of GamePact taking the Miner Madness Game back to Egypt to help educate the youth on coding using the game we developed.