Session- July 2019

Building Board Games With Digital Components

This month we are designing board games.

There is one major requirement. You must make at least one tool in Scratch that is used to play the game. These might be dice or players or points or more. In the tutorial below, I show you how to name players, roll dice, and change scores. You can use any of these in your game or make your own tools.

$\"\"$

Play test your games with others to see if it\’s fun and if the rules work.

Write (or type) your rules down so that the game is clear. If you can\’t figure out how to write a rule, maybe it doesn\’t need to be a rule! Ask for paper if you need it.

Games are all about having fun under a set of rules. Creating a board game is much like creating a video game.

$\"\"$

A game loop is the loop of process that you play in a game. Here’s an example of a farming game.

The game plays by certain rules. It has costs and it has gains. There’s winning and losing.

The purpose of the game is to run a successful farm, constantly getting better at it, until you create the best farm in the land.

There are 100s of types of video games. Thankfully, there’s only a few types of board games.

You can choose one of the below or even mix a few types:

Roll and Move- Monopoly, Candyland
Deck Building Games- Munchkin, Pokemon
Area Control Games- Risk, Warhammer
Roleplaying Games- Dungeons and Dragons, Shadowrun
Party Games- Apples to Apples, Cards Against Humanity
Classical Combat Games- Chess, Checkers
Puzzle/Guessing/Word Games- Pictionary, Scrabble

Here’s what you first need to decide:

What’s the goal of the game? Work together, beat opponents, collect great treasure

What kind of game is it? What type of mechanics should it have?

What would a player turn look like?

What kind of things does the player interact with? Cards, coins, items, etc. I will show you which of these you can program.

Feel free to experiment on paper and play with different objects. Please do not draw on the objects.