Creation of Soundwave

 After being briefed on what our next project was going to be we promptly went away and carried out some primary research by looking at existing board games and what makes them so successful. We looked at various games such as, ‘Pass the bomb’ and ‘Cranium’ to get ideas on how the board itself could look and most importantly the game play. 

 

Cranium

Pass the Bomb

Gibson Games, age 12 any number of players. Previous winner of the Daily Telegraph Game of the Year Award '1994'.

Inside the box
110 letter cards each card has a different combination of letters printed on both sides. These combination's maybe just 2, 3 or 4 letters. i.e CI, SHE,RES, STR,LAST

A black plastic bomb about the size of a cricket ball with a string fuse. Inside the bomb it was a timer which can off anywhere between 10 and 60 seconds after starting.

A die, this has three different faces. One face says TICK, this means the letters from the card can't be used at the START of the word. TICK TACK means letters can be used ANYWHERE. The third face has a picture of a bomb, This means letters cannot be used at the END of the word.

Aim of the game

To make words using the combination of letters from the chosen card before the bomb goes off.

Even though the rules for this game were not exactly clear enough for us to understand because in the board game box there were no rules so we set up the game and it became easy to understand how the game worked with the bomb itself and dice etc. After playing a couple of rounds the game became rather enjoyable.

Ghettopoly

Designed by ‘David Chang’ in 2003 Ghettopoly is a parody of the famous board game ‘Monopoly’ as it uses the exact game play mechanics, player 2-8 with a setup time of five to fifth teen minutes, playing time anywhere between two and half hours to three hours. As we started playing we quickly realized that the board game was highly offensively and racist here is some examples of why we thought this, instead of building houses and hotels players get the opportunity to build crack houses. The seven game pieces where in ‘Monopoly you would find, the iron, the dog, the hat, the car etc. In this game you’d find, a pimp, a whore, a 40 oz of beer, a machine gun, a marijuana leaf, a crack rock and a basketball.

 

 

Our board game is highly influenced by the Nevermind the Buzzcocks (a programme on the BBC) the programme shows contestants trying to guess and what song it is just by hearing only the intro from the other contestants who are either humming or singing it. As a group we thought that instead of just having to guess the intro, players in our game could either sing/hum any part of the song or theme using the card lyrics to assist them, however players can't sing the title.

 

Whilst collecting this research as a group we discussed what roles we were going to have in order to create ‘Soundwave’.  My roles within the designing process was to create the logo and the box, knowing this I created various designs for the possible logos using both acoustic materials and Adobe image editing software. Several hours of creating a mixture of logos I finally came up with one that I felt matched the game. I used different effects such as outer glow so that the logo would stand out from the background.  

Development process:

The first slogan for the game was originally, 'Soundwave, fun for all the family' but we felt that, that slogan is over used and it wasn't unique so Reece and I brain stormed about other possible slogans and finally we came up with the slogan, 'Soundwave, Where you take the stage'. We thought it made more sense in the fact that every time you or a team mate pick up a playing card you have to perform either by humming or singing solo or together with the rest of the players looking and listening to you just like as if you were on a stage under the spotlight. 

Whilst I was designing the background for the box I thought it would be a rather good idea to have soundwaves for the background image simple because it relates to the title of the board game and I thought by adding features like, ‘Game of the year award 2010 and a barcode it would give the box a professional look but at the same time make it aesthetically pleasing.



Above was the original design for the board game; the reason for changing the entire logo was because as a group we decided that it wouldn't be suitable for a family board game box. Hence why the new logo design and background is far more colourful and aesthetic pleasing to the target target audience. However as you can see I've seen kept the background image as sound waves as it links in perfectly with the working title for this current project. 





This was the original design logo for the board game as you can see it's just a simple typography without any effects.  

After some experimenting  I came up with this logo design, still keeping the original typography design only this time I’ve added various effects such as ‘Drop Shadow’, ‘Outer glow’ and ‘Bevel and Emboss’. Compare this logo to the logo used on the final back design you can clearly see that the logo are slightly different this is simply because when I apply the logo to the background I used another effect this time it was a blending mode called 'Overlay' giving the logo a translucent look.

Since this particular project was a group effort we all helped out in different areas of the designing process of the board game, even though my primary objects of this project were to design the logo and the box I also helped out publishing the modern cards, by writing the artist, song title and lyrics. 

Lucky Dip







Retro



This particular card was the final outcome for the 'Lucky Dip'. All cards were designed on adobe illustrator by Michelle, The one below was the final design used for the 'Retro' theme and the background colour of the cards relates to the colour that the player lands on.







Modern





TV/Themes





Since the card we had purchased was white and after we’d cut out we felt that it wouldn’t give off a professional look with rough edges and scoring marks all over so it was agreed that we’d spray paint to the box black so that when we printed out the covers for the box that it would leave a straight, thick black border.

Below is the final design for the board game which was designed by Reece Local, created on both ‘Adobe Photoshop CS5’ and ‘Adobe Illustrator’.

Designed by Jak the following is on the rules and how to play ‘Soundwave’.

Ages 12+ (suggestive themes in lyrics)

4+ players

Set up time: < 5 minutes

Playing time: > 45 minutes

Setting up

• Players split into teams of 2 or more players (there’s no limit to team sizes!).
• Shuffle the 4 coloured decks and place them on their corresponding places around the edge of the board. (Red is themes, Blue is modern music, Green is “retro” music and Yellow is random)
• Place the timer in an easily viewable location and the dice with easy access to all players (White die for movement, Purple die for bonuses and Black die for penalties).
• Each team rolls the dice, the highest rolling team chooses what playing piece their team will be using and will be the first team to have a turn. The other players then choose their team’s colour in clockwise order from the first team.

Object of the Game

The object of the game is to get to the middle of the board and collect all 4 coloured cards. Remember, this game is meant to be fun, don’t get too competitive!

How to Play

• In each round of the game, when each team’s turn comes around, that team nominates a team member to be their “performer”;  that player draws a card matching the colour of the space they start the turn on (on the first turn, that will be the same colour as your team). From then on players will take it in turns to perform.
• On the card, the player will be given a song title, the artist that wrote that song and a “lifeline”. The player has to “perform” this song to their team so that they can guess what it is.
• Each “performance” will last 20 seconds (variations of this will be explained later) and will be timed by the team to your left.
• The player cannot say/sing the title of the song or who the song is by.
• If the performer doesn’t know the song, they can use the lifeline to help them or simply forfeit the round.
• If the team guesses the song right in the time limit, the team can roll the white die and move that many spaces around the board in a clockwise direction.
• If the team doesn’t guess the song right in the time limit, the team does not roll the dice and stays on that space until they guess right.
• The purple and black dice are still used.
• After making a full circle of the ring the team is on, if the team has a successful performance on any of the larger circles, that team can then move into the next ring (ultimately heading towards the centre of the board).

Middle Ring

• Once a team starts moving around the middle ring, the performer rolls the purple bonus die before drawing their card.
• The bonus die will give the performer a style of which to sing the song they are about to draw.

Vocal Solo: The performer MUST sing the song on the card. If they don’t know the tune of the song, just make something up!

“Brian Bedonde”: The performer must start every word of the song they are about to perform with the letter ‘B’.

Duet: The performer chooses another team member to assist them in a duet for the next song. If the team only has 2 players, then this symbol is considered another “Christopher Walken”.

Christopher Walken: The performer must not use any rhythm or tune during their performance.

The Inner Ring

• The innermost ring introduces the black penalty dice. The performer rolls both the purple bonus dice and the black penalty dice before drawing their card.

“You Must Not Fail”: If the team does not guess the song right, the team misses their next turn.

“Time is Running Out”: The performance is only 10 seconds long. Good luck.

Double-Take: The performer draws 2 cards but has the same 20 second time limit. The team must guess BOTH of the cards to count as being successful.

Winning the Game

The Centre

• Reaching the centre isn’t the end.
• Your team must successfully perform one song from each category.
• You start on the colour that you were on to move into the centre
• You can’t move on to the next colour until you have succeeded in the one you’re on.
• You don’t roll the white die to move, you move one space at a time in clockwise order.