Play Design and Learn - Blog 1 Game Choice

 Hello!

Recently my family has had the opportunity to participate in a study at the U of C in where we can try to change or redesign a board game that could incorporate culture or perhaps make it easier for younger kids to play.

It took my family quite awhile to decide on what to try to redesign and for that I have to apologies to the Investigators!  :)

Family:

Dad: Age 42 

Mom: Age 41

Child: 6

Game choice:

Taking a look at the games that we play the most as a family we thought about how to convert them.

Kingdomino - Tile Laying game using biomes to match and score points.  Too much work to change and balance we thought.

Ticket to Ride - We kind of already play "house" rules as my child is interested in trains from an early age but the regular game is too difficult for him.  As well there already exists a child version of the game.

Mice and Mystics - We play this game the most as a dungeon crawler with mainly dice used to determine actions.  At first we thought about changing the theme but couldn't come up with good ideas.  However as my son is into robots we thought how to incorporate some more logic and programming into a game.  Enter the game Mechs Vs. Minions.  Considered a Boardgramming game where cards are sets of instructions and players draft and order them on their play area to "write" simple programs.  On your turn you execute your program and step by step move your avatar on the board.

We are calling it:

Mice and Minions

Stay tuned for the next post where I will document our first play through.  I am currently Editing and uploading the first hour of gameplay with what we tried.  We will also document on what worked and what didn't work and then implement it into a second play through.