OUGD503 - Studio Brief 2 - Hasbro Board Game (Collaborative) - Aspects of Dominoes Mindmap

Different aspects of Dominoes Mindmap

From looking at various different dominoes concepts and existing commercial sets a list was made of all the different features of the game of dominoes to help work out how the game could be changed. By breaking the game and format down it was easier to understand how aspects of it could be changed and altered to create something original.

Key aspects picked out from the game of dominoes:
- All the pieces are rectangular in shape. It was considered that if these were to be altered then the shape would still need to be geometric or tessellate to be able to 'match' each other.  
- Everyone plays into the centre, connecting dominoes with opponents. It was considered that the game could have more of a race aspect where you are playing your own separate games like in Bananagrams, but still taking pieces from the centre.
- All the dominoes have dots on them. Could these be replaced by icons that mean different things? e.g. divide means split the board up, clear board means work with what you have left.
- Each domino has two halves. Could this be increased so there is more sections / numbers? This would also alter the shape depending on how many are added.
- The pieces are 'matched' end to end. Could the pieces be overlapped to 'match' or 'matched' side to side.
- The pieces are flat and quite two dimensional. Could the game be made more interactive by making them into blocks that can stack similar to Jenga or would reflect the idea of a woodpile.
- Players can only play one piece at a time. Could this be increased?
- There are a fixed amount of dominoes for different sets e.g. a double six set has 28 dominoes 
- The pieces have to be 'matched' together. Maybe they should be opposites or things that fit together in another way 
- Dominoes is played freely in straight lines, wherever the players want to position their pieces. Could the game fit to the constraints of a board, which would limit the game play more making it more difficult.
- Uses numbers on each of the dominoes. Could words be matched instead or could there be more or less types of numbers?

From research definitions of words associated with the game of dominoes were looked into. Some of these it was considered could be good starting points for concepts and could provide aesthetics for the game as well.

Interesting words included:
Boneyard 
Tile
Woodpile
Stones
Streets 
Hub 
Divider