The Initial Inspirations

Chess is one of my favourite games. With a simple set of rules, you get an intellectually enriching, and often emotionally exhilarating experience.

In the readings that we did, the art pieces that popped out to me are the ones that are based on Chess. “White Chess” is an art piece that came to mind. It is the same game of Chess, except that all the colours of the pieces are White. One might say that the game was not really changed, merely how it looks. Still, unless you can play Chess blindfolded, there will come a point where it becomes very difficult to differentiate between your pieces and your opponent’s pieces. With the same game of Chess, it speaks volumes on the meaning of war that we never really considered–what does it mean for us to be on different sides, fighting against each other? Especially when it becomes difficult to differentiate between us and them?

Still, White Chess is not merely the same as two sides being the same color. The entire game takes advantage of the intellectual and emotional aspects of Chess, thereby adding a multiplier to the underlying message.

There are other examples of Chess being sampled. For instance, various artists, including Duchamp, made Chess pieces with particular styles. In all of these instances, these appropriations of Chess took advantage of the very nature of Chess to emphasize on a different underlying message.

The same way that the simple rules of Chess allow for emergent gameplay behavior, appropriating Chess also allows for corresponding emergent messages.

Thus, I wanted to do appropriate Chess in a way that delivers an underlying message that isn’t present in the base game. The message I wanted to send across in my art piece is the cyclic nature of war. Chess is a game that has a clear end goal–checkmating the king. Once that’s done, the game is officially over. However, most wars in real-life are never that simple. They often last for several generations until no one really knows how the war began, only that they have to win it.

In the same anti-war spirit of several Dada art pieces, such as White Chess, I would like a Chess game that discuss the gruesome part of war that never ends, and to make players, what does it all mean?

Version 1

In the very first version, I wanted to remove all possible win conditions from the Chess game. Firstly, I had kings removed from the board. I had a feeling that this will make the game far less engaging, as a lot of dynamics of Chess rely on playing around the kings on the board. Secondly, I added a rule that whenever a piece gets eaten, you can have it respawned on one of its starting positions. A respawning piece may land on a Chess piece that is already there, in which case that Chess piece gets eaten and you can respawn that too.

The results of the first playtest showed that the game does communicate the message of war happening across several generations until the point where the original configuration of the board has become lost through noise and tiome. After playing for a while, both players agree that the game has become meaningless. They are just playing it for the sake of playing the game.

Although this does meet my goal, I also feel that I don’t want the message to be delivered because the players feel bored. I want players to feel engaged by the art piece, both intellectually and emotionally. This cannot happen if there are almost no consequence to the player’s actions.

Version 2

In order to add consequence to the player’s actions, I have decided to modify the rules so that whenever you respawn a piece, you have to wait have to make two moves before you can respawn another piece. The reason for this is so that the game is still endless, but there are brief moments players can feel that they got the upper-hand, as in real-life war. Still, unless the player is a professional, they will likely be unable to capture all of the pieces.

Furthermore, I have put the kings back on the board. This was a tough decision to make. The problem with removing the kings from the board is that too much has been taken away from the game of chess. Chess strategies revolve around the king, and so, without the king, chess strategies are inherently meaningless. Much of the beauty of the game is lost without the kings.

The playtest of the game showed that this version of the game is much more intellectually and emotionally engaging, and still communicates the cyclic nature of war. However, I believe there is still room for improvement. There is a lot of cognitive energy needed to keep track of how many moves you need to make before you can respawn again. What makes chess elegant is that all cognitive energy is spent on how the pieces interact, and not anything extraneous. Another observation I made is that the game is best when both sides have lost quite a number of pieces, and are trying to hold it out until they can get their respawns. I felt like the game should exist in this state more.

Final Version

For the final version of the game, I have modified the rules such that whenever you lose 6 pieces, you can bring 4 of them back. This removes the distraction of having to keep track how many moves you need to make before you can respawn again, while keeping the spicy part of the game where both sides have lost a few pieces.

When we showcased the game in class, one player managed to checkmate the other player, and both players lost 5 pieces. Thus, the respawn mechanic was not triggered. In an ironic twist, they just played a regular game of Chess. In an effort to make the game more intellectually and emotionally engaging, I have weakened the part of the game responsible for discussing the cyclic nature of war.

Post Mortem

The Chess’ checkmate rule and my message on the cyclic nature of war are inherently contradictory. A possible idea for how this game could be changed is changing checkmate such that it doesn’t end the game. For example, whenever you are checkmated, the another piece is promoted to the king, and the king simply becomes the piece that was promoted.

Originally starting off as a silly idea with zombies and paper maps, my game project CountrySide developed into a fun experience that brought a smile to every playtester that encountered it. CountrySide is a tabletop role-playing resource management game where you play the role of a leader of a farming nation, rejuvenating the leveled wasteland by growing crops and fending off hordes of zombies as they swarm the landscape.

In the final version, almost every game piece is made from recycled or reused materials, evoking the scavenger-survivor atmosphere of using only recycled scraps at your disposal to create things. For example, the game mat is made from the remains of a package delivery box, the rules are handwritten onto a piece of a cereal box, and the game spinner is made from cardboard, a paperclip, and a brass fastener.

But what led me to the creative decisions I took when making this?

Research

After reading into the 1900s Dada art movement while I was developing this game, a few key points stood out to me. First, the Dada movement as a whole embodied a spirit of rebellion, activism, and endless creativity. The movement began in Zurich, and the Dada works created there evoked playfulness and childlike wonder. Second, when the movement reached Berlin, it took on a more political approach. Many works were critical of the nationalistic fervor at the time and their own country’s values. To them, art was a means of expressing their opinions in a way much more universal than words could. Finally, Dada seeks to take ordinary objects and inscribe within them new meaning. For example, “Le Cadeau” is a work from 1921 Paris that turns an iron into a menacing tool with spikes. This simple modification to a household object transforms the meaning of it from something not associated with danger, to deadly weapon.

How does this connect to my game?

Design Decisions: Playfulness & Childlike Wonder

Making all the game components out of objects you would find around the house was on purpose. This not only amplifies the atmosphere of apocalyptic hodgepodge creations, but serves to evoke the experiences of childhood, where kids would make games or creations out of cardboard boxes and enjoy it like any other board game. The pieces are meant to be simple enough to be replicated in a minute, allowing it to be played by kids, teens, or adults who have little time for setup and just want to get the game started for everyone to join in.

Design Decisions: Criticism of Values

When playing games, it is easy to get immersed in the world or mechanics but not think about the underlying values that games propagate. Many popular games on the market, both digital and physical, involve some form of competition, war, or theft. Many people find these games fun- including myself. I play and enjoy first-person shooter games, because of the fast-paced action and the feeling of triumph when you try your best against a rival team and win. However, I wanted my game to be something different. I wanted my game to be exciting, but teach the values of self-reliance, cooperation, and empathy.

Since the players can only win if everyone wins, and everyone loses if just one player loses, it forces the players to think as a collective unit. Everyone is focused on keeping themselves stable, but still being quick to offer help to another player.

In the game, land is seen as something to rejuvenate, care for, and protect, not something to conquer from another player or to buy and trade mindlessly like a commodity. This is in opposition to games like Risk that glorify land as a commodity to be taken from someone by force.

Finally, the game fosters empathy because each playthrough can put you in the shoes of another player. In one round you might be the food surplus distributor, and in another round you might be getting overrun with zombies and struggling to feed your nation. Since your starting position is determined by your luck at the beginning, it makes players think empathetically about others. I want the player to think like, “I’m doing well in this round, but the player across from me is struggling. I remember struggling like that last round.”

Design Decisions: Inscribing New Meaning

This one is more philosophical than concrete in terms of my design, but I think that it is interesting to see found objects take on a new meaning. I like seeing the shift in meaning from a paper city map, used to inform tourists, to becoming a representation for a post-apocalyptic city that you and your companions are fighting to bring life to. I like seeing popsicle sticks, a remnant of a food item, being used as a token to represent food itself. Inspired by the Dada movement, CountrySide seeks to shape the meaning of common objects and give them new life within this new fantasy world.

Gameplay

In a global zombie apocalypse, every city has been destroyed and leveled to just the streets. In the midst of chaos, several people have decided to form nations of survivors to cultivate the land, protect each other, and create civilization anew.

Each person represents the leader of their own survivor nation run by farmers and protectors.

Game Objective

• To win, every person must acquire 15 Plots of Land, and not have a single Zombie in their nation.
• If one player loses, everyone loses.
  • If you go into Food debt, your nation enters Food Shortage. Put a scrap of paper that says “Food Shortage” next to your game pieces. If you enter Food Shortage again while currently in a Food Shortage, you lose.
  • If every Plot of Land, including your Town Hall, is occupied by Zombies, you lose.

Game Pieces

• Paper city map: Each city block represents a Plot of Land.
• (Recommended) Flat pieces of cardboard to put under the map
• d10 Die / 1-10 Spinner
• d6 Die / 1-6 Spinner
• A lot of tokens to represent Food
• A handful of tokens to represent Guardians
• A lot of pushpins / thumbtacks to represent Zombies
• A handful of coins
• Colorful pens or pencils, unique to each player

Game Setup

1. Every player must pick a Plot of Land on the map. Draw a small circle around it. This is your Town Hall.
2. Select a Plot of Land adjacent to your Town Hall. Color it in with your pen. Then do this again 4 more times, so you should have a total of 5 Plots of Land colored in.
   1. Do all the plots have to be touching the Town Hall? No. Your plots can be adjacent to each other, but not necessarily have to touch the Town Hall. If you wanted to make a nation that is one long strip of land you could.
   2. Can the plots of land skip over water features like a river? If there is a bridge or some feature that allows crossing, then yes. If there isn’t, then no. If it is unclear, you can draw a bridge and then connect it to your nation.
3. Each player must collect 10 Food tokens.
4. Each player must collect 1 Guardian token.
5. Spin the 1-10 spinner or roll the d10 die to see who gets the highest number. Break any ties by rolling or spinning again. The highest number goes first. The turn direction is clockwise.

Turns

On your turn, perform these 4 actions:

1. Situation Roll
2. Production Count
3. Consumption Roll
4. Zombie Infection

SITUATION ROLL: Spin the 1-10 spinner or roll the d10 die. Perform the action that corresponds to the number.

• 1-4: You get 1 more Plot of Land.
• 5-6: Random Event. Check the Random Event table below, then roll or spin again.
• 7-10: Add a new Zombie to a land on your nation.

PRODUCTION COUNT: You will flip coins for food production. Count how many Plots of Land you have that do NOT have Zombies on them. Do not count your Town Hall either. Flip that number of coins. Every coin that lands on “heads” means +1 Food token to you. // If you are currently in Food Shortage, flipping at least ONE “heads” means you are no longer in Food Shortage.

CONSUMPTION ROLL: Roll the d6 or spin the 1-6 spinner. Subtract that many Food tokens from your nation. // If you reach negative food, then clear out all your Food tokens. You are now in a Food Shortage.

ZOMBIE INFECTION: If you do not have any Zombies on your land, ignore this step. If you do, for every Zombie you have on your nation, flip a coin. For every coin that lands on “tails”, add one more Zombie onto your nation.

• Do I have to flip a coin for this Zombie?
  • If it was added on a previous turn, YES.
  • If it was added on this current turn (your Situation Roll), NO.
  • If you just now flipped a coin for Zombie Infection and added this new zombie, NO.

Out of Turn

Outside of your turn, at any time, you can share Food and Guardians with other players. You are also allowed to discard 1 Guardian in exchange for destroying 1 Zombie at any point. There is no limit to how many Guardians you can use or how much Food or Guardians you can share.

Random Event

If you get a Random Event on your turn, roll the d10 or spin the 1-10 spinner again. See the effects of the event.

1. Get +1 Free Guardian
2. Get +2 Free Guardians
3. Everyone gets +1 Free Food
4. Pick any nation (including yourself) and they will magically gain +2 Food.
5. Get +2 Free Plots of Land
6. Add a new Zombie to your nation
7. Add two new Zombies to your nation
8. One of your lands becomes unusable for the rest of the game. Cross it out.
9. Lose 2 Food.
10. Everyone loses 1 Food.

Images by Bastión Toledo-Altamirano
Game design by Bastión Toledo-Altamirano
A huge thanks to all 6+ of the people who playtested this 🙂

Final Game Instructions (2 Players):

Get Random Words:

• Open up on this computer https://wheelofnames.com/ to pick your words (words should already be there)
• Give both players 10-15 seconds to scan the list of possible objects before starting.

Roles:

• Choose one player to be the Director and the other to be the Builder (switch roles each round).

Gameplay:

• The Director randomly spins the wheel of names and writes down the object without showing it to the Builder.
• The Director gives instructions on how to build the object in Minecraft, but they can’t say what the object is.
  • Example: The Director can say “Build a tall wall with stone blocks” or “fill in that hole with water” but not “Build a house” or “Make a pond.”
• The Director can make 1-2 clarifications per instruction to specify how to perform the action if the builder is not performing the action as the Director envisioned.
  • Example: “Build a wall horizontally instead of vertically”
  • This does not mean you can add more actions to your instruction. For example you cannot say “Break the floor and replace it with stone”
• The Builder follows the instructions and guesses what they are building while they construct it, however, they are limited to 3 guesses for every instruction the Director gives.

Scoring:

• Count how many instructions the Director gives.
• The goal is to guess the object with the fewest instructions possible.

Switch & Repeat:

• After the round, discard the object and pick a new one.
• Switch roles and repeat the process.

End of the Game:

• The lowest amount of instructions given is your teams high score, go brag about it or something

Playtest #1 Notes:

On my first playtest, my two roommates swiftly resolved the game because initially Players created the prompt cards and thus they could easily guess what the generated words are after a very few amount of instructions as they had a hand in creating them. 

Playtest #2 Notes:

The second playtest went better as I changed the rules to allow for a randomly generated prompt that the director got through a website. However, as the game progressed it became clear that the Builder often misinterpreted the directions in unexpected ways and guessed wildly complex objects, leading to the game dragging on for a while. The players were also annoyed by the lack of a mouse, forcing them to play on a trackpad which is difficult in its own right. From this playtest I realized the following changes were necessary.

1. The director should be allowed to give instructions as a Clause, not to many clarifying questions.
2. Let both players have 10 seconds to scan the list before starting to reduce rounds taken and wildness of guesses.
3. The game should be played with a mouse.

Summary:

My work was inspired by how much Minecraft has been appropriated and turned into different games by many fans of the game. I was also inspired by pictionary, which in itself is a game that takes objects and appropriates them into an artist’s interpretation. I also wanted to take some inspiration from the Dada movements by twisting this version of Pictionary, ensuring the artist in charge of drawing is not the one in control of the direction they’re given leading to the game that was made.

StickPin is a casual mobile game that focuses on quick reflexes and precision. The gameplay involves a mechanic known as literally “stick the pin in the gap”, where players must strategically place pins onto a rotating circle without letting them touch other pins. The challenge intensifies as the circle speeds up, testing the player’s reaction time and accuracy.

My game is based on the traditional *StickPin* game design, where the gameplay and mechanics are similar. The player clicks the left mouse button to stick a pin into a rotating circle, and the objective is to avoid sticking the pin onto an already placed pin. However, in my version, the central circle has been replaced with a whale, and the pins are now harpoons. After the player throws five harpoons, the previously stationary whale starts to struggle, and as more harpoons are thrown, the whale struggles even more. I hope that at this point, the player realizes they are no longer playing a simple relaxing game. With technological advancement, human hunting of whales has become as easy as a player clicking the mouse to throw a harpoon, but the immense suffering inflicted on these intelligent and spiritual creatures is overwhelming. The cost of hunting is far outweighed by the damage it causes, and this is what I want players to take away from the game.

Playtest & Iteration

Playtest 1

At first, I designed the game as a Mario version of *StickPin*. While it looked novel and didn’t align with traditional expectations for a Mario series game, I didn’t feel that it had any meaning beyond being “fun,” which wasn’t what I wanted. So, I redesigned the game’s elements and initially replaced the Mario theme with whales and harpoons. The logos for the whale and harpoon, as well as the ocean background, all came from the *China Whale and Dolphin Conservation Association*.

Playtest 2  

I received a lot of constructive feedback, such as the message I wanted to convey about whale conservation wasn’t effectively communicated. So, I reflected on this and considered several possible ways to enhance the impact of the game.

Playtest 3  

In this test, I added a new animation effect: after the player throws five harpoons, the previously stationary whale starts to struggle, and the more harpoons thrown, the more violently the whale struggles. This mechanism added a stronger hint toward the game’s message, and it received the best feedback from players, who thought it was the most effective version.

This version effectively merges gameplay with a deeper message about whale conservation, making it a meaningful experience for the player.

By Ruby Harkness

Geolistenr:

Geolistenr is based on the well known game Geoguessr. Geolistenr acts the same as Geoguessr in the sense that the player is trying to figure out where in the world they are. Instead of google earth images, Geolistenr uses 10 second audio clips from around the world. The player will hear 5 different audio clips and attempt to match each clip to a country in a word bank. 

How to play: 

The Idea: Geoguessr with audio clips

• Geolistener can be played with as many people as you want
• One person acts as the game master, and uses the spreadsheet to access audio clips 
• The game master will choose 5 audio clips coming from 5 different countries
• They will write sound 1, sound 2, sound 3, sound 4, sound 5 next to a list of the 5 country names that go along with the sounds  (the game master should shuffle the countries around so they do not line up with the sounds) (see playtest image below) 
• The game master will then play each sound for 10 seconds, and the player(s) will try to match the sound up with the country 
• When played with more than two people, players are allowed to collaborate and talk about where they think each sound is from 
• The player(s) win if they get all of the countries correct 
• The spreadsheet is pictured below and shows how the game master keeps track of the sounds and countries 

Artists Note: 

Appropriation is using something someone else made to create something new. Geoguessr is a game in which the player is dropped into a random location on Google Earth and asked to decipher where they are based purely on their surroundings. I think this game is heavily based on appropriation, and uses maps, or Google Earth, to create a very enjoyable game. I thought it might be interesting to take a game based on appropriation and appropriate it further. (I also just enjoy playing Geoguessr.) 

I wanted to take appropriation of maps in a different direction and utilize sound as the main recognizer. It is based on DADA performance work. Before taking a deeper look into it, I was under the impression that DADA was overall a visual art movement. I have since learned about the intersection of visual and audio performance that was utilized in DADA after learning about Sophie Tauber and Hugo Ball’s collaborative performance project. While Ball performed a sound poem, Tauber danced. I thought this was interesting, and wanted to explore sound as a DADA theme. The original idea was for the game master to say outloud the name of a city and have the rest of the players guess what country it was in, but during a critique someone suggested using real audio from different places, and so I went digging for a source of audio clips. Finding the sounds was one of the most difficult parts of creating the game, but I ended up appropriating an artistic project titled “Cities and Memory.” This site is a project based on providing different sounds in different places all over the world. I went through and hand picked 25 sounds I thought would provide enough information that the player(s) may be able to tell where they are, but I didn’t want to make it obvious. In a perfect world, I would find a way to automate this process, but for now 25 sounds leaves enough room for 5 play-throughs of the game. 

I did three play tests of the game, one with a game master and one player, one with a game master and 2 players, and one with a game master and around ten players. The first play test done in class with one player was super fun, and it was interesting to see what the player thought of the sounds and how they interpreted what they were hearing. With two players, discussion was a big aspect of the game, and the collaboration between the players as they tried to figure it out was interesting to see. The final playthrough, done with the entire class was even more interesting, and made the game a lot more time consuming, with people going back and forth between answers throughout the entire playthrough. After much discussion, they eventually ended up getting all the sounds correct. It was interesting to see what assumptions the players made about places based on audio, and how language could either help or hurt them. Most of the audio clips I played utilized language, and watching the players try to decipher which language was being spoken and where it is commonly spoken was very intriguing. It was mentioned in a play through that this game could also provide a commentary on colonialism, and how that has altered the way language has evolved in different places. This is an idea I think the game could really utilize, and it could definitely be explored further with different game modes and groups of countries. If this game does anything, I think it provides players a bit more knowledge of the world through having to solve a puzzle. I am very interested in the world, and spent a lot of time lurking on “Cities and Memory,”  It is linked below if you would like to check it out. I love Geoguessr and in the future want to expand Geolistenr even more by adding more countries and sounds to the reference sheet.

Spreadsheet Link

Cities and Memory Link

Playtest and Spreadsheet Images: