Hello again everyone,
Here is the Print and Play version of the Game that I have been working on. It is a Hexagon based strategy game with a theme of Nano-Bots vs. Viruses. I hope you all enjoy if / when you play it. Please respond if you like it or not just to let me know what you think.

                                                     
                                                                     SHELL GAME
                                                                      (click here ^)

Playtest Night

Playtest Feedback:

     So a little backstory, I decided to go with a Hex based game that kind of melds Agion, Connect 4, Othello, ...and tic-tac-toe. I call it "Shell." Pretty simple idea involving gaining control or your opponents pieces by way of flipping them to create a 7 tiled 'Shell".
   I got a lot of good response from play testing as this is the 6th...7th...8th iteration ( I cant remember anymore) of the game. Most notable to come out of playtest night was a "Can only convert if a string is 3 tiles or less" mechanic (made the games go from avg. 3-5 mins up to an avg 10-15 mins). As well as a Permanent 6 tiles preset to know where players needed to place the first 6 tiles before starting the game.
     I very much enjoyed play testing everyone's game. and I am excited to see what comes out of it all.

An image from Playtest night:

Theme & Concept

     For this portion of the "Making a Tabletop Game" assignment we are to develop a working theme and concept statement for your game. I have settled upon the idea of Nanobots vs Bacteria/Virus. there will be an overall red...ish green...ish color scheme for the Organic components and a blue/green color scheme for the robotics.
Concept statement: EPIC BATTLE!!!!......on a molecular scale...


some reference;

Nanobots

Bacteria/Virus:

a game with nanobots as main theme:

Sci-fi movie with Nanobots as main theme:

Brainstorming Games

This assignment was all about brainstorming games and producing ideas with inspiration. I sat for about 3 hours trying to generate ideas. Many of them seemed good, A game about Djinn powers, one having to do with a jump mechanic, even thought about pup-up games. Overall I think I am going to go with a strategy Battle arena based game about Nanobots.

Print and Play Breakdown; Pocket Imperium

     For our next assignment having to do with the creation of our print-n-play / board game we were to take a game that we had tried in the previous assignment and break it down according to chapter 10 of Jesse Schells book The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses         http://artofgamedesign.com/. 

     I chose Pocket Imperium because it was the most fun to play. I am a fan of turn based strategy games in general, so this appealed to me immediately.

     We needed to break down the game according to the six aspect of Chapter 10: Goal of the Game, Core Mechanic, Space of the Game, Objects,Attributes, and States, Operative Actions, and Resultant Actions. So, Here are my findings;

Goal:
     Get the most points by controlling the most systems after each round.

Core Mechanic: 
     There are 3; Explore, Expand, and Exterminate. You get these three cards per round, and it is up to you to determine the order that you are going to do these three things per round (not every player will do all three things in the same order<orders of these cards are kept secret>). The order that you use them in determines the level of effect for each mechanic i.e. If it was your first choice to Expand then you get to add 3 ships to the board. Where as if Expand was the last thing you did in the round then you would only be able to add 1. Explore works by moving your fleets of ships, and Exterminate lets you invade 1,2 or 3 systems depending on the order that you preformed this action during the round

Space of the Game:
     The space ...is space.. The board is made up of 9 "cards" that all have a hexagonal map over a graphic of stars, included is a huge star in the middle of the board with the number III( the biggest system on the map) on it. Each of the outlying 8 cards having 3 "systems on it, one level II system and 2 level I systems. Players move their ships around the map by way of the discrete, two dimensional map.

Objects, Attributes, and States:
     The Object of this game is to earn points after each round by controlling  more "systems of starts" than the other players. The "Objects" of this game are the Map (9 cards), the 9 action cards (3 each of Expand, Explore, and Exterminate, and the 15 each of a different colored space army.( a set of 15 ships for each player) The maps has the attribute of being randomized before each round with the center always being the level III system (you can randomize the other 8 cards of the map. Once the map is made for that round it is in a permanent state until the round ends. The cards have the attribute of being randomized by the player as well as the order of when they are going to be played a secret. The ships have attributes as well, They can be in motion from system to system. The states of ships are: invading, defending, motion, and still.Then there is a start token that has only one attribute and that is to denote what player goes first in the event that more than 1 player reveals the same action at the same time.

Operative Actions:
 See: Core Mechanics

Resultant actions:
     The outcomes of the 3 operative actions depend on what order what player did what action. If all three players first action is to expand then who goes first refers to whichever player is holding the "start player token"  and clockwise from there. If all 3 players do the same action then the results are far more noticeable than if each player did a different action than the other.

     I would like to have had a larger board to print i.e. the map consisting of 4 8.5 x 11 pages instead of just one. The space to be able to enjoy this game just was not there, but the overall strategy, secrecy respond/react of the game made me a fan over that small little detail. I liked this game enough to make a huge version of it measuring 3 ft by 2... much better at that scale. Overall I highly recommend this game.

my opponent lays exhausted after being soundly defeated.

(had to use crayons and pencil top erasers as ships...)

(also... I didn't really play my dog, my wife just did  not want to be in the photo)

Print and Play

For our latest assignment we were to investigate print and play board games one that I particularly enjoyed was Creepers
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/41529/creepers

I also Discovered Pocket Imperium, A "space exploration and invasion" game, I really liked this on of all the PnP games I have tried.It was very strategic, easy to learn, hard to master. The aspect of this game that stood out to me was that I was able to randomize the play field which added a huge lvl of depth to the game.
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/147299/pocket-imperium

Film language in game

while working on a reverse edit of an Assassins Creed game trailer, I thought to myself how close to a movie that the "game Trailer / commercial" for a game has come to an actual movie. I am older and remember a time when a commercial for a game was nothing more than a few blips of what the game looked like, and not a lot of narrative, or anything close to resembling a story line or plot. Now, that graphics and gaming power has increased exponentially over the years, we have specific genre types and the trailers sync up to how the movie of the same genre would play out. Action games have many cuts, etc. I am looking forward to a game trailer that is in every way the same as a movie, graphics included, maybe someday...

I enjoyed my time in Figure Drawing class. Very challenging as this was the first time I had to draw the human figure from real life.

This is a Chess set that we had to create for 3D for Game Art second semester of freshman year. I enjoyed working with sculpy clay for the first time. This was challenging because it was the first time I designed something that I was going to create in 3 dimensional space.

This is one of my all time favorite trailer/intro of a new character of all time. I love the twist the developers gave on what was inside the mind of The Pyro. When I play Team Fortress2 as The Pyro, Candyland is all I can see.