Project Concept
Physical and Digital Board Game
Physical and Digital Board Game
My Role
Lead UI Designer, Game Mechanics and Narrative Design, Ideation, Research, Wireframing, Prototyping
Lead UI Designer, Game Mechanics and Narrative Design, Ideation, Research, Wireframing, Prototyping
Bridge to Kultur is a physical-digital hybrid board game that explores cultural nuances through a role of a diplomat. A being known as "The Calamity" is on it's way to destroy the world. You must traverse the world as a representative of your nation to gather resources, form alliances, and survive the calamity. Will you brave it alone or learn to put your differences aside and work together?
Context
Often people face misunderstandings in cultural differences missing context, social norms, and customs that can drive people apart if not taking the time to be considerate. All of us being in LA has gave us an opportunity to be exposed to many cultures, but we find many missed opportunities of connection through not being able to navigate our cultural differences.
For this project, we decided to define culture as shared values, communication styles, behaviors, and social structures that share how different groups of people interact with each other. Through this lens of culture we decided to make a board game to stimulate intercultural communication through scenarios.
Research
Our research centered around what kind of game we should try to make. We looked at multiple games but Mario Party, Queen's Dilemma, Pandemic, and Dungeons and Dragons were heavy inspirations we took from. Specifically looking at campaign style games from Dungeons and Dragon's and Queen's Dilemma, flow and resources from Mario Party, and roles and obstacles from Pandemic.
We figured a social board game is our best opportunity to create a game tied to culture. We wanted players to interact with each other and learn about cultural nuances through simulated experiences. Goals for the game should be tangible so that gameplay does not feel as if choosing the nicest option is the way to win. This way players can reflect on their actions and understand everyone else's values by the end of the game.
Concept and Game Mechanics
Connecting the game back to culture, we worked on making the nations involved with the world so that we could write scenarios centered around their happenings. Through workshopping, we gave each nation a value that affects their behavior in scenarios, a buff that helps them accumulate a specific resource, and debuff that affects negotiations, and a resource they trade with other nations. Resources are key to surviving the game and necessary to acquire through diplomatic alliances.
Overview of Mechanics
Scenario Ideation
Hybrid Interaction Ideation
The main influences for the nations were taken from multiple cultures in our world. We went off a Yiddish Proverb: "We are not so different from each other but express ourselves differently." This influenced our process when creating the nations where we took two different cultures and found where they aligned behaviorally. One of our greatest "aha" moments seeing the Hakka from China and the Iroquois from North America villages having villages built similarly.
Fire Nation Notes
Fire Nation Role Screen
Water Nation Notes
Water Nation Role Screen
Earth Nation Notes
Earth Nation Role Screen
Air Nation Notes
Air Nation Role Screen
Worldbuilding: Sammy and Marcus
Physical Pieces
Each nation was placed on the map according to the environmental backstories we gave them. Dungeons and Dragons and medieval maps influenced it stylistically and layout-wise our inspirations were from Mario Party, Sorry, and Monopoly. Each player has pawns to traverse the map and fortifications that symbolize the levels of resources they have built and eventually determine if they win or not by the end of the game
Board Game Progress
Pawns
Fortifications
Board Game: Alexander
Physical Pieces: Marcus
UI Wireframes
In these wireframes I looked into the best way to view metrics and what kind of visuals read the easiest. We were leaning on this trust meter early on where through the scenarios, you can manage trust with your own nation and with the other nations. Other important elements were resources and menus to see how well you're doing in the game. After the feedback we learned players appreciated an in depth look into their status than a summary, wanted more information to the tutorials than being thrown into the game, and wanted time to read on their roles and the scenarios they are in.
UI Screens - Lie
UI Screens - Sammy
Wireframe Sketches
Wireframes: Lie and Sammy
UI Mid Fidelity
In Mid-Fidelity screens, I experimented with different layouts and interactions to go through metrics, the build function, and transitions between gameplay. These were prototyped and play tested with players reporting satisfaction with the storytelling. For the metrics, they were confused about the nation connections icon being present in the scenarios section as it looked like a life meter and commented on the amount of turns feeling too long of a game.
Midfidelity Screens
Status Sketches
Status Sketches
Status and Build Screens: Sammy
Scenario: Lie
Branding
The branding for our game was in a Medieval Manuscript style. This style reflects the game's goal on diplomacy, trust, and survival. The art direction was lead by Princess but we collaborated together to make sure our elements were ADA accessible within the screens.
Art Direction: Princess
Final UI
The Final UI prototype includes onboarding to connect your device to the game, gameplay of a scenario, metric screens, and the end game section. Feel free to choose Scenario Flow if you would like to just see the gameplay.
UI and Prototype: Sammy
Animations: Lie
Assets: Princess
Final Physical Pieces
Board Game
Game Pieces
Scenario Cards
Fortifications
Nation Pawns
Scenario Cards
Game Board: Alexander
Game Pieces: Marcus
Final Presentation
Retrospective
Future considerations we would like to push forward is improving the immersive story telling by adding more animations to a possible third screen everyone can watch. Other than that we have been thinking on pitching this game at events like IndieCade or put it on Kickstarter. We would need funds to run a server for the app and physical pieces which we guess to price around $70k if this were ever to come to life.
This was a great project to be a part of. Everyone played an important role bringing this game to life and we all did a great job making it all come together. I appreciated all the times we bonded throughout this project whether it's getting pizza for our late night or nerding out over storytelling and games we like. We had a great working system for our group and I would love to make another game with everyone again.
