VI. Toy, Game, or Invention

After considering a few choices, I decided to create a board game. This board game would draw upon all the things that frustrate you about current board games, combining them into one, intentionally bad game appropriately called "The Worst Game Ever".

play - to exercise or employ oneself in diversion, amusement, or recreation.



The object of The Worst Game Ever is to travel around the game board collecting as many 90's Television Star cards as you can. Before the game starts, 1 of the 90's Television Star Cards is secretly drawn, randomly deciding the outcome of the game before it even begins. This mechanic is hilariously random, making much of what you do during the actual game pretty pointless as the best player does not necessarily win. This was taken from my favorite card game of all time: Killer Bunnies and the Quest for the Magic Carrot.


Killer Bunnies packs


Killer Bunnies in progress (note the complexity and tiny pieces)


Magic Carrots (Replaced by 90's TV Stars in my game)



Killer Bunnies is ridiculous amounts of fun, but the main frustration is the randomness and sheer amount of time it takes to learn. I incorporated these two frustrating elements heavily in The Worst Game Ever. The more complex and messy the game ended up, the happier I was with my design.


Examples


Risk (So many rules. Tiny Pieces)


Hero Quest (millions of rules, cards, dice)



For the player pieces, I wanted 2 really boring pieces and 1 exciting piece that everyone would fight over. So I decided to go with charcoal drawings of U.S. Vice Presidents for the crappy pieces and a full color badass painting of Chuck Norris for the awesome piece. To make them 3D i mounted them on cardboard and cut them out.


Reference Images:
John C. Calhoun

Martin Van Buren

Chuck Norris


Game pieces (drawn by me)






I created some animal pieces out of sculpey and painted / covered them to add some extra pieces and randomness to the game.






For the game board, I wanted something huge and cumbersome, making play and storage frustrating. The board simulates a town, with 8 "locales" for the player to visit in hopes of collecting 90's TV stars.


Preliminary design





Finally, for the packaging, I wanted something humongous. I had a really big printer box in my apartment, so I used that. I wanted it to be apparent that the packaging did in fact used to be a printer box, adding some crappiness and humor to the final product. I created the front box image in Photoshop.




Game board








Additional pieces





Sample 90's TV Star Cards