"Create a dexterity game focused on active motion, positioning, player skill, and physical interaction with components as a method of changing the game state. Designers should address the question of accessibility and the challenge of physical interaction in their game."

THEME:

"The Heat Death of the Universe"

(Your project is required to connect in some way to the above theme.)

100% OPTIONAL Challenges for Inspiration:

"Where we're going..." - No essential information relies on color alone for understanding or communication. In fact, the entire game is strictly black and white in its visual presentation.

"31 Flavors" - Your game has written rules to change the difficulty of the game per player, and any physical interaction has an alternative way to engage base on a player's individual needs.

"Pew Pew Pew" - Your game is designed to be laser cut, and offers files for download to create necessary laser cut components.

(Pick any number of the challenges, including none!, to undertake while designing your game.)

Project 2 set us up for the main flow of this course: Theme release, brainstorming, workshop, play testing, and submission. This project aims to press you past traditional roll and play rule sets within a similar time limit. Here you'll need to literally get the game moving using the rules of physics and human physical engagement. You're not just typing up a how-to, but making a realized toy for play. 

Games that deal with such structure for your inspiration: Jenga, Klask!, Carrom, Crokinole, Cube Quest, Operation, Flick 'Em Up, Folded Triangle Tabletop Football, Jacks, Shuffleboard, Binho, Passe-Trappe (Slingers), Tumblin Dice, Dungeon Fighter, Rampage, Rhino Hero, Pitch Car, Catacombs, and Junk Art. Even the favorite idle activity House of Cards showcases some of the ideas we'll work with.

Rather than a mere simulation of events, these games involve actual tests of aiming, balance, response speed, flicking, tumbling, precision placement, and even sliding of components on the table top space. These can be fast paced and simplified or complex and nuanced. The question of challenge for us will be to make yours ACCESSIBLE. 

During brainstorming and development we will discuss how you must consider physical ability in relation to your game. How can you make your game playable by a younger audience, or those with limited hand-eye-coordination? How can you attenuate your visuals for those with color-blindness? What must you do to create an experience that can be enjoyed by as many people as possible? We'll be using an industry developed Game Accessibility Guidelines as part of this project:

https://gameaccessibilityguidelines.com/

We are doing this project as a way to introduce designers to seeing their game not just as a collection of rules meant for idle turn-by-turn play, but spaces for active play engagement. All later projects may/should be seen as opportunities to fold dexterity into the game experience. After re-creating a classic, and being heavily limited to a component-focused game, this project is another unfolding of the possibilities of games as pieces of interactive art.

Our same general outline of a game jam applies here: Day 1 you'll receive the conceptual theme on itch.io, along with three optional special challenges you can undertake. We'll engage in collective brainstorming and start to build our games.

For this project you are STRONGLY encouraged to bring your own craft supplies such as cardboard, index cards, cardstock sheets, wood, marbles, or other things you can use to build a physically viable play experience as quickly as possible.

On Day 2 we will head to the Criss Library for a workshop about using Adobe Illustrator to laser cut game components from wood, acrylic, and cardboard. This will give you the tools necessary for digital distribution of a physically interactive play space and component listing. This will be, by far, the hardest of the projects to create in a print-n-play format, and preparation of documents people can use to BUILD your game if necessary will be a key challenge to address.

Day 3 will focus on play testing and finalization of all game elements in preparation for upload to itch.io and the submission of Necessary Game Documents to canvas.

Final documents necessary for each game:

• Game Breakdown v3 (only a pdf will be accepted)
• Playtesting Forms (minimum 2 of v2 full scope, and at least 2 microsheets) (pdf, scanned or digital),
• Accessibility Writeup (only a pdf will be accepted)
• Ruleset and Components Document (pdf)
• Board/Printable Documents (if needed) (pdf)