CONVEYOR BELT
Intuitive Design Board Game
PURPOSE
Conveyor Belt was designed to be playable without the players ever having to look at the rules. The use of symbols and commonly used mechanics make a game that is both complex and unique, while also easy to pick up and understand.
BOARD
The board can be printed out and then taped to itself to form a belt. The belt is attached to the rest of the board which allows the players to turn the knob on the side and rotate the board backwards. The fire area sits at the back of the board, showing player's that they are eliminated if they fall off. The front of the board has a fence blocking it, showing players that there's no end to the board and that they just have to keep racing forward to keep up. The last player standing on the board wins.
CARDS
The board has two types of symbols on it, the blue Action tiles, and the red Conveyor Belt tiles. Each space on the board tell you how many of each type of card to draw on your turn. For example, the tile with "Action x2 + Conveyor Belt" means you would draw two Action cards and one Conveyor Belt card. There are three action cards, Extra Roll, Skip, and Swap. Extra Roll allows you to roll twice on your turn, Skip skips the next player's turn, and Swap swaps your space on the board with another player. The Conveyor Belt cards show a number on them, telling the player how many spaces to turn the board back.
Conveyor Belt Play Test
POST MORTEM
What Went Right: The play testing for this project went shockingly well. A lot of the different things I implemented into my game got the exact response that I wanted. The first thing that happened was one of the play testers rolled more spaces then there were left on the board. I had a giant paper fence set up at that end of the board, and when they got to it they just assumed it meant stop on the space their on. Another example was one of the players drew the swap places card, and were able to figure out it's effect based off of the minimalistic art that I put on the cards. One more thing that went right was after all of the struggle I went through making such a complicated board, I finally got it to work at the end of the game. This dragged a lot of attention to my board and peaked player interest.
What Went Wrong: When trying to make a game that explains itself, the logical route is to go simple. That is why I decided to make the most complex board imaginable. 3D printing was a huge issue with this project. I found a simple conveyor belt like structure on thingiverse and decided to print it. The first day of printed it, I left it alone for the 5 hour print time and when I returned it had only completed one hour before a filament jam. I restarted and left with it about half way done. When I returned the next day the 3D print was gone and I had to start over. The same issue happened again that day and I ended up having the bindery print it instead. The following day I went to pick it up from the acid bath where I found that one of the main pieces had broke in the process and the project was due tomorrow and it was already almost 8pm. I ended up having to use the pieces I had, and try and make a functioning base for the board out of whatever was available in the maker lab. The next thing that went wrong was because it took so long to make the conveyor, I had to make the board beforehand without knowing the right dimensions. The board ended up being too long and wide, and I ended up cutting the ends off and cutting off some of the tiles and using Scotch tape to patch it together. Lastly, after going through all of these problems, it was too late for me to even think of making player pieces for the game. The solution to this I used was just reusing the UFO player pieces I modeled from the first assignment as temporary pieces for the play test.
Lessons Learned: I learned a good deal about how things can crash a burn at the last minute. It's important to be able to improvise and make do with what's available. Another thing I learned was how to cut out content when necessary. I had to shorten the board to make sure it fit the conveyor, so I cut some of the spaces off so it would fit. Lastly, I learned to convey mechanics through symbolism and pictures. Some of the things I used were fences to show an end of progression, fire to show being eliminated from the game, and 3 player symbols with a slash through the middle one to show a “skip player’s turn” card.