Airship: Pleiades
A pop-up board game
One day, a chase happens on the airship: Pleiades.
A thief sneaked into this airship and stole the treasure maintained in the tower. Guards have to trap the thief. At the same time, the thief must knock down enough guards to escape.
Game Overview
Game genre: Casual, Strategy
Ages: 6+
Estimated time: 30 Minutes
This is a board game for 2 players. In this game, one piece forms the thief, and a larger number of pieces are the guards. Because of this imbalance, the thief is more powerful than the guards. Also, the ways they win the game are different.
CHARACTERS
Guard
Thief
Guard Dog
Moodboard & sketches
STAGE
The airship Peliades flying over the fields.
Game board design
Moodboard & sketches
PACKAGING
packaging design
board design updated2/25/2023
Moodboard & sketches
GAME GUIDE
At the beginning, Player 1 (P1) has 12guards . Player 2(P2) has 1 thief .
Gameboard & gird
P1 takes the first turn, put 1 guard on the empty board, followed by P2, turns alternating thereafter.
P1: In every turn, put a new piece on board or one step to an adjacent point. Every two guards removed from the board may exchange for one dog . The dog cannot move to the roof.
P2:In every turn, moves one step to an adjacent point. The thief captures an adjacent guard by leaping over it onto the empty point beyond, removing the guard from the board.
Exception:
In this situation, if the thief cannot move to a new point (except two available points)
in two turns. P1 wins.
Goal: The guards win by enclosing the thief so that it may not move in its turn. The thief wins by capturing 8 guards that they may no longer enclose the thief.
PROJECT TIMELINE
Purpose & research
Most board games either take a long time to play, such as Monopoly and Battle Flag; or are difficult to understand, such as Wolfenstein and Runner. Also, nowadays, people can hardly spend a lot of time and patience playing board games. So I want to make a fast-paced board game that is easy to understand but requires brain power.
I found a very simple game called "hare and hound" in a collection of games from all over the world on the Switch called 51 worldwide classics. The imbalance of this game attracted me, so I decided to make a rival game with different rules for both players. At the same time, in my junior year, I made a pop-up book project, which I thought was an interesting way to interact with the players. At the same time, the folded paper was easy to carry and cheap to produce.
Design board & chess
I made the three-dimensional sketches first with normal paper, then scanned every fold into the computer. With Adobe Illustrator, a version with the exact shapes was made. After painting digitally, I built the final piece with double-sided printed cardstock paper.
pop-up book practice
the game "hare and hound"
In order to put a chess piece on the roof, the piece itself has to be light enough. Because of this, I bought some 1/2-inch Wargame Counter Stands, and they fit the board very well.
Play testing
double-sided printing
chess
sketch
printed version1.0
First scenario demo:
I found that there are too few places for the THIEF side to leap over in the design of the board, and the THIEF side is at a disadvantage. The paper used in the board is too smooth and the pieces fall over easily; the transparent bottom of the pieces makes it difficult to distinguish them from the top.
Test the playability of the board
Second scenario demo:
After modifying the problems found in the last demo, a new problem was found. On the new board, the guard side is clearly vulnerable, and the 8+2 pieces used in the previous round cannot trap the thief after the simulation.
Test the minimum number of guards needed to win on each grid
Third scenario demo:
After changing the guard side to 12+2 pieces, the probability of the guard side winning is still not great, I found that after the first demo there were too many lines in the vertical direction of the board. So I reduced the vertical lines from 7 to 5.
Forth scenario demo:
Successful, but a bug was found, revise the rules for the bug ('exception' in the 'game guide' part).
Changed numbers of vertical lines
Add more guards, Quick test on Ipad