OUGD503 - Studio Brief 2 - Hasbro Board Game (Large Collaboration) - Initial ideas, thoughts and sketches

Initial Ideas, thoughts and sketches

Some of the key aspects of dominoes that were considered interesting were picked out from research to further explore visually. 

These included: 

- Fitting to the constraints of a board 

- Playing in separate lots

- Using icons instead of numbers, These could also be used to disrupt the game 

- Using geometric / tessellating shapes 

- Having more than two parts to a domino

- Key words associated with dominoes : Woodpile, Boneyard, Hub, Stones, Tile, Divider, Pips 

Fitting to the constraints of a board and having multiple parts on the domino

It was thought that by using a chess board format pieces would then have to be placed within this and adapt within the space to play the game. Rather than having numbers or dots on the dominoes it was thought these could use coloured blocks which would have to be matched to pieces next to them in all directions e.g end to end and side to side. The 'dominoes' would be various sizes from 1 block to three blocks long. All players would get the same amount of the different tiles when starting the game. The pieces could alternatively be matched so they fit along with the grid of a chessboard. Perhaps different icons could be placed on the board in a similar way to scrabble e.g have another turn etc.

Geometric / Tessellating shapes taking inspiration from the idea of Tiles 

It was considered that square tile shape pieces could be used as dominoes. The shape of the pieces would mean that the domino could be matched with four other pieces. The tile could be split into four further squares or split diagonally to create four triangular sections. The triangular sectioned tiles would be matched to one number etc on each side whereas if the square sectioned tile was used this would mean a matching tile would have to match two of the sections within the tile. For these two variations of the same idea it was though colour could be used as an alternative to numbers or dots. 

Making the game three dimensional 

It was thought that the game pieces could be made into blocks which could then be stacked and matched three dimensionally. However when this was roughly drawn out it was found it looked a lot like Tetris and also stacking the pieces in some ways would be physically impossible.

Thinking about words associated with the existing Dominoes game 

Pips are another name for the dots on dominoes. These could perhaps make up segments of fruit shaped pieces. The Boneyard within Dominoes is the draw pile. Playing on the concept of bones it was thought that different shaped broken bones could make a new set of dominoes. These would be matched to create whole bones. Thinking about the idea of a woodpile it was considered that icons could be created to represent actions or things associated with wood e.g. stack, chop, burn etc. It was also thought that the 'dominoes' could be stacked rather than laid flat on the table, to create trees or physical stacks of wood. This would still have the element of matching the pieces however they would be placed on top of one another rather than side by side. Numbers could be matched or wood grains, which would fit with the idea of the pieces being slivers of a tree. Two wood grains could be used for each piece to reflect the two halves of a domino. Having to build the most 'trees' could be how the game is won.

Changing the tile format 

It was thought that the game could be adapted to a card game where the cards would be matched with the card before. It would be a quick fire, reactive game where anyone can play a card at any time, with the aim of getting rid of all your cards first.