Jonathon Chia: Analog Games

HexaRun
Game Type: Analog board game
Role Taken: Game Designer/ Co-Visual Designer
Credits: Irwan Shah l Mohd Syafiq l Terry Ong l Choo Jingjie l Choo Hou Sin

Concept behind the game
It was created for a school assignment based on our module (T231 Analog Game Theory), whereby we were given 3-4 weeks to design an analog version based on certain digital games. We chose Canabalt[I did the liberty of linking to the game page incase you wanted to try it], which was basically playing as a stick figure, trying to jump over buildings, dodge scattered obstacles across building rooftops, trying to survive without plunging to your demise. We had to replicate mechanics but we could change certain aspects of the game. For example, canabalt was a one player game, due to our project guidelines, we were allowed to turn it into a two player game(which obviously made it more interesting as board games usually have 2 or more players, not just one, it would be boring playing it yourself)

So we were puzzled as to how we could replicate the idea of a never ending gameplay, like the game itself, till you actually died. So we used poker cards to do a recycling gameplay first in our initial prototypes, then we moved on to modular gamepieces like the ones below, which is hexagon shaped, thus our new project title, HexaRun.

So basically what we did was change the game's objective, from surviving till you died to a race to the end with the opposing player. Incoporated the use of power cards and distance points(ingame currency which you would use to purchase certain advantages) to deter each other's paths, making it harder for both players to reach the end.

Added certain other game mechanics as well, such as tile effects to make it more interesting, when players step on it, they trigger special effects that come into play which may affect either player in a positive or negative manner.

We also created two different types of gameplay to make it more interesting, one was normal gameplay where players had to align the 12 pieces together to form a connected pathway, from the start to end game piece. The other was the recycler gameplay, whereby you can choose to place the end piece anywhere on the playing field, then you have to link up paths till you lock it to the end game piece.

For more details, feel free to check out our video commentaries on how our game is setup and played by our team members, or for indepth details download our game design document to see our iteration process and initial prototypes we came up with along the way before finalizing the final product.

Screenshots