Perseverance!

Day two of our project started on a high, with the group meeting together early to discuss ideas. We had our idea of a Native American Indian game sorted, with new ideas coming onto the table such as the idea of having 2 playable characters on the board, one being an enemy and the other being a chief. The idea of this would be that players could freeze others on the board for one go by 'hopping' over them. However, we decided for children this may make the game too complicated. In the end, we decided to keep it as we had already arranged, with four tribes, with one movable player each, each with a different design. Each tribe would also have its own name and flag. We decided on Old Crow, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse and Wild Turkey. These would give a comedic edge to the tribes. We also arranged to have the camps contain four items:

My small concept of the camp

• A Teepee
• A Totem pole
• A horse (or some sort of animal)
• A campfire

We had also discussed having four packs of cards, one for the totem pole, one for the teepee, one for the town (miscellaneous items, horse and campfire) and chance. However, after discussing it with the group I thought it would be best to just have a pack of chance cards which were mixed, as children like the anticipation and excitement about what card they are going to get. After discussing this, I went and designed my own concept of the cards and presented them to the group. They were well received, but we decided we would each have an input to the design and I would finalize the design and put them together.

My negative chance card concept

However, we briefed Nigel on our idea and found a few flaws. We had to decide whether we either made it more complex so it appealed to adults or we made it simpler for children, as it was too complex for children but too simple for adults. After a long discussion with Nigel we decided we really like our idea, and think we could make it really good. Also, we liked the fact that no one had made a childrens game for this project before. We agreed it would be challenging but if it worked, it would be magnificent. It was just a case of doing a lot of research into children, successful childrens board games and also doing a lot of play testing with children. I offered to test the game as much as possible as I have many young relatives, and also record it. At the moment, we are all researching into popular childrens board games and what children like and with some perseverance I believe we can make our idea into some great.