Week 1 - Game Choice and Initial Mechanics

Park It

By: Bishoy

After sharing all of our game proposals in class, five games were chosen to be brought to life for our board game projects. Fortunately, my game was chosen by my classmates and so together Adam, Tony, Shady, and I will design this game and produce the final product a few weeks from now.

The idea for this game is based on my love for the number scramble game which forces a player to reposition a set of numbers in order to align them in chronological order. This game is difficult because each step is dependent on the previous move and so, one must plan ahead in order to reach the final goal. This is the idea that we are trying to incorporate in Park It. By using the theme of parking in NYC, we will have players shift the lanes of the city and manipulate their direction in order to find the best possible parking location. Each player will be responsible for parking a set number of cars and/or buses in the best possible locations in order to achieve the maximum number of game winning points. 

As my group began to discuss the mechanics of the game last week, we thought about how the road pattern cards would be positioned on the board to allow for manipulation. I discussed with the group how each of the cards must have the same entrance and exit points in order to have the rest of the cards align with each other. The manipulation can be incorporated inside each pattern card to include loops, shortcuts, and bridges. In my original plan, I proposed that each player would have about five moves in order to move his or her car throughout the "course" in order to reach a parking spot. If a player is not able to do so in five moves, he or she would lose their turn. As we discussed this, Tony proposed that instead of losing a turn (basically starting over the next turn), each player can just stop where he or she ended up and just pick up where they left off on their next turn. I then suggested that we can put some sort of penalty on this such as a reduction in the number of points. 

In terms of the game design, Shady suggested that we use some sort of pins under each card that can allow players to spin the cards. I think we can also make use of some sort of magnetic strip under each card to help players move them around. Hopefully, we will add more to the game this week in terms of mechanics and structure as we work towards creating the first prototype.