Earlier this week, I posted my notes on a board game idea I was kicking around. The game seemed sound while it existed as nothing more than words and numbers on graph paper, but I wouldn’t know if it was actually any good until I actually converted those things into an actual prototype. And so I did.
When it comes to making prototypes, I have a golden rule:
If it’s pretty, you’re doing it wrong.
Yes, it’s a bold statement, but I stand by its principle. The point of the exercise is to create and test a playable version of the game as quickly as possible. If you’re spending time making it any more attractive than absolutely necessary, you’re wasting time that could be spent iterating on the design.
Of course, if your game has players collecting gold while being chased by apes, and you just happen to have gold tokens and an ape figure lying around… It’s okay to make the prototype a little pretty.
Here’s a quick overview of the prototype components and how they’re used in the game:
- Board Tiles: Rather than do one long track, I made four interchangeable board tiles that can be arranged in any order to create the track. The players move in only one direction along the track. If a player’s pawn lands on a space with a circle icon, he scores a gold. If it lands on a square-icon space, he scores whatever face-down reward token is there. Triangles have no effect for players.
- Reward Tokens: These have numbers zero through 4 on them. There are 10 of them, but you only use 7 per game. They’re shuffled and placed face-down on the square icon spaces of the track.
- Movement Cards: On your turn, you may play any number of these, and move a number of spaces equal to the total. If any of the cards played have triangles on them, you must move the ape a number of spaces equal to the number on one of those cards.
So how did it play? Resoundingly “okay.” Not great, but not terrible either — no one lost an eye, and the game didn’t burst into flames on the second turn. It was fun, though, and surprisingly strategic for such a simple game. I’ll be tweaking it some more and posting full rules once I’ve got them hashed out.
