Assist Me In Designing a Board Game - Part 4

There is much to cover in this update so I recorded a video to show the storyboards I've been working on and the thinking behind them. If you need to catch up on the Parts 1,2,3, find them here.

Watch the video above for the visuals.

There's a lot to talk about in part four of help me design a board game. So much so that I think this video is going to be a lot easier to explain what I've gone through in terms of the next steps in this process.

So, let's start by looking back at parts one, two, and three and see where we are. Then we'll talk about part four.

In parts one and two, we defined the target player and the customer, which is mostly educational-based. Schools can use it at home as well, but primarily, it's going to be educational for schools.

We generally want ages 13 and up to adult. It's a personal finance game for teaching people about how to manage money through life and so on. Happiness is the goal.

We’ve identified the five phases of life: youth, education, career, family, and retirement.

In fact, let me just use some of these fancy little arrows here on screen.

And we identified the six choices. The six choices were nutrition (how we give ourselves energy), housing (how we house ourselves), commuting (how we get around), income (how we make money), savings or investing (what we do with any extra money), and free time (what we do for enjoyment).

So, we had our five phases in life and our six choices. Then we had to decide how we were going to go through these choices.

I proposed some type of path that cycles through each of the six choices. And so, you have to actually take some action for each one.

For example, if you get a job, you get your income or salary from that job. If you are living in an apartment, you have to pay your rent, and so on. And so, we would cycle through these six choices as we go.

I proposed some concepts of maybe rolling a die and choosing what kind of events might happen as you go along.

So, that's where we left it.

I had to do a lot of thinking at this point. I’m going to bring up another tool here, a tool that I’m using for prototyping. This is Adobe XD, in case you’re wondering what it is. Adobe XD—let me turn that off so I can move around here—is a prototyping tool. It’s pretty good. I like it. I used to like it more when it was free, but now, it’s part of the Adobe suite.

What you’re going to look at here—let me zoom out—is everything you see here represents the thinking I had to do during part four.

I spent a lot of time, a lot of hours refining and thinking through things.

I’m not sure we’re going to get through all of it in this one video, part four. We may break this up into a couple of videos, but let me move on to where I started right after part three.

Okay, so we defined the choices and the phases in life. What happened next?

Well, what happened next is I started to visualize the gameplay in terms of those six choices. What are those choices going to be, and how are players going to interact with the game?

I find it very useful to think and put myself in the shoes of the player physically. And I’m doing this in my mind’s eye, physically thinking about the actions and the movements of tokens and cards and so on. I find that helps me really understand if something’s going to work or not work.

For example, let me focus right here on these cards at the top. These are income cards, nutrition, housing, and so on. Let’s talk about income. Income, for most people, is a job, right? You could be an entrepreneur, which is a little bit different, of course, but generally, it’s going to be a job for most of us as we start out. So, that seems to be the right thing to do.

How are we going to do that? Well, let’s give players a choice of jobs, right? We’ll have some type of cards. These are just some sample cards from another game. We’d have cards, and each card would have a job on it. And we let the players choose the job. Pretty straightforward.

Well, this is where it starts to get more difficult. As you know, there are hundreds or thousands of jobs. Do we have to design and print hundreds of thousands of cards for different jobs? Of course not. That’s not feasible.

What if we had 30 cards, 30 jobs, let’s say? How do we decide which 30 we should have without leaving some important ones out? That becomes difficult.

Another thing that becomes difficult, and again, this is all happening because I’m thinking and putting myself in the shoes of the player. I’m trying to help articulate my process of designing games. So, if you’re doing the same thing, maybe you’ll find this helpful.

Let’s say we could print cards for 30 different jobs. Well, other considerations arise. Jobs have different levels, right? You can have an entry-level job at a lower salary. But then, as you improve your education or job experience, you could have higher-level jobs with higher salaries. How do we represent that on cards?

Then the other challenge is that we need this game to move quickly. In our earlier parts, you may remember we talked about trying to get the game to be completed in an hour because that’s a typical class time.

Whether we can accomplish that or not, I’m still uncertain, but that is the objective. If we can, it’ll be a good thing. If we have too many job cards, that’s too many choices. When you have too many choices, and you have four players playing, consider how much time it’s going to take them to go through the cards to choose the job they want. It’ll slow the game down to a halt; it’ll grind the game.

So, how do we solve this? We solve it by reducing the number of jobs to a reasonable number. That’s not going to slow the game down.

Regardless of how much it might cost to print cards—printing cards isn’t that expensive—it’s really about the gameplay. Maybe there should only be six, seven, or eight jobs, and that’s it.

How do we choose six, seven, or eight jobs? Well, we don’t choose jobs. We choose job categories, right? So, instead of listing individual jobs like nurse, doctor, or technician, we just have one card that represents healthcare. Another card might represent trades or construction. Another card might represent entrepreneurship or business roles.

By categorizing the jobs, we can minimize the number of choices. That’s good. And then, within the job category—let’s say healthcare—we could have job experience and educational experience. I’m currently calling them XP (experience points). Think about it like points.

For entry-level jobs, you may not need any education or job experience, but of course, the salary is going to be very low.

Some jobs absolutely require a certain education. For example, you can’t be a nurse, doctor, lawyer, or teacher without a degree from an accredited institution. That’s not going to change anytime soon.

Some jobs require educational experience, which means through the game, you have to gain those educational experience points.

Other jobs, like those in business, entrepreneurship, or the arts, don’t require specific education—they require skills.

So, we have to consider that job experience points can also relate to skill points. If you don’t have formal education, you might have skill points. Alternatively, we could broaden the definition of education to include things like community college, apprenticeships, internships, or self-education.

For the job cards, we decided a single card could represent an entire sector and multiple jobs within that sector. For example, one card could represent healthcare and include levels of jobs with different requirements—like entry-level, mid-level, and high-level—with corresponding salaries and necessary education or job experience.

This approach simplifies things because one card can represent an entire category and its progression paths. It took me a lot longer to come to this conclusion than it does to explain it here, but that’s where I landed.

Now, there’s another problem: What if more than one player wants the same job category? For example, if I choose healthcare, what if another player also wants to choose healthcare? Should we have multiple copies of the same card for every player? That doesn’t seem efficient or necessary.

We solve this by giving each player a token. The token would be a unique color and shape, like a yellow cube or a purple cylinder, to accommodate players who are colorblind. Players can then place their token on the job card to indicate they’ve selected it. This way, one card can represent a job category for multiple players.

I also explored how to physically display the cards. I prototyped a card stand with a slot where players could insert the card and attach their tokens. This stand raises the cards off the table to save space and make them easier to read. However, my thinking evolved, and I realized we might not need the stand at all. Instead, we could place the cards flat on the table and allow players to add their tokens directly to the card.

This approach simplifies production and reduces the need for extra components.

Next, I thought about the other categories—nutrition, housing, commuting, and investments. Originally, I had separate choices for nutrition and housing, but I decided to combine them. For example, if someone lives in a luxury home, it’s likely they also have higher-quality food options. Combining these categories simplifies the game while maintaining logical consistency.

For investments, I originally considered offering choices like stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and crypto, but that became too complex. Instead, I narrowed it down to four risk levels: bank savings (low risk, low return), low-risk investments, medium-risk investments, and high-risk investments. This keeps the focus on financial decision-making without overwhelming players with too many options.

To represent investments, I designed a cardboard component with containers where players could place their tokens to indicate their choices. For example, a green token in the bank container might represent $1,000 in savings. This approach keeps the board organized and minimizes clutter.

Finally, I started simplifying the overall design. Initially, I had separate boards for each player to track their points and progress. Over time, I consolidated these into a single shared board where players use their tokens to represent their achievements in categories like wealth, relationships, and lifestyle. This change reduced the number of components and made the game more streamlined.

Throughout this process, my focus has been on simplifying gameplay while ensuring it remains engaging and educational. I’ve prototyped different versions, tested various layouts, and refined the mechanics to create a balanced and enjoyable experience.

That’s where I’ll leave it for part four. In the next part, I’ll dive into further refinements and share how the game has evolved since then. If you have any thoughts or ideas, I’d love to hear them.

Thanks for sticking with me, and I’ll see you in part five!

Share Your Thoughts In the Comments

Am I on track?

Am I missing something?

Do you have any suggestions?

Should I keep posting about this game?

PS: Please only share ideas if you are willing to allow me or anyone following this discussion to use them for free without any obligation. If you contribute an idea that has a significant influence on the design of my game, I will be pleased to gift you a copy of the game.