ANALOG ADAPTATION - DESIGN WEEK
MY ROLES: GAME DESIGNER, FACILITATOR, ARTIST
Team Members: Aunonna K., Violet, Sophie, Hyunbeen O., Nick L., Mac M.
A Shorter Hike is an analog (physical board game) adaptation of the indie game called A Short Hike by Adamgryu. It was made during one of Sheridan's Design Weeks, with the challenge being to invoke the feelings that the original game had, while feeling unique and suited for the board game format. My team decided to make a board game for 1-2 players, centred around the ideas of exploration and discovery.
For this project, as I was in third year and therefore one of the most experienced in the team, I took on the role of Team Lead (along with another member). I also had my usual roles of Game Designer and Artist during development.
FINAL PRODUCT
The goal of A Shorter Hike is to reach the top of the mountain at your-- and potentially a partner's-- own pace. Unlike many board games, there's no competition between two players. Players share their resources and help each other, with both players winning as long as one makes it to the top of the mountain. Since A Short Hike, the original game, is largely focused around exploring new areas and discovering things to help you along the way, we made those the focuses of our adaptation, through the use of levels on tiles, event cards, quest cards, and item cards. Players are meant to be motivated to continue playing through the uncertainty and discovery of cards, based on the map tile they land on.
For this project, I was one of the team leads, game designers, and main artist. This Design Week was the first in which I seriously took on a more authoritative role, and that had its ups and downs. While working in my usual game design and art roles, this time I also took more initiative in facilitating team discussions during meetings, resolving conflicts, and documentation of our process. It was sometimes tough, but thanks to my classes on working in teams and in leadership roles, I had some ideas on what to do, and now I feel like I'll do better next time I'm put into this sort of role.
MY WORK
GAME & MAP DESIGN
Here's what we got to show off at the showcase! Continue scrolling to see older versions (goes from newest - oldest).
This is essentially the beta version of our game adaptation. It was drawn on a whiteboard so we could continue refining the final design.
Before settling on a static map with cards that could reveal different events, we made various concepts like the ones shown here. There was a randomly generated terrain (using cards) version, one that was in a circle formation, with the peak at the center, and a mountain shaped one, among others.
Here's what we got to show off at the showcase! Continue scrolling to see older versions (goes from newest - oldest).
Above are the various versions of our game's map we made over the course of development. From left to right, it goes in order from most recent to earliest incarnation. Since the game essentially IS the map, this was the biggest point of contention in our team meetings.
At the start of development, when we were all getting to know each other, we focused too hard on making an interesting game using references to A Short Hike. We knew we wanted to have the goal of reaching the top of a mountain, and we wanted players to feel some motivation to do so, but we didn't know what exactly that should be. In the source game, players are usually motivated by curiosity to explore, but since we were making a board game, we weren't sure at first how to translate that. Some early drafts had us trying to make randomized maps with cards, but this led to too many issues, such as locking players from the end card, or making it too easy.
After many revisions, discussions, and test prototypes (usually drawn and played on the whiteboards, as shown above), we realized that having a set map would be the best for our wanted player experience. We used this realization, and also our newfound focus on the verbs "explore", "discover", and "relax" to guide our final prototype's design. The main changes we made near the end were the tiles' shape-- hexagonal to allow more freedom of movement, reducing the amount of hindrances/negative effect/punishment type cards, and deciding on an unchangeable island design (for control, plus other benefits). These changes allowed us to have a more balanced game that better reflected the source game.
We found ourselves satisfied overall with the final map, and adding colours to code areas really helped. Once the final game pieces were made and people began to test our game during the showcase, I felt a sense of satisfaction at having been able to make a game like this, even if it's not something I would have expected to before.
PHYSICAL CARDS
The Level 0 Cards for our final version of the game.
The Level 1 Cards for our final version of the game.
Some of the prototype cards I and another teammate made for the beta game version.
The Level 0 Cards for our final version of the game.
Above are the 17 physical cards I made for A Shorter Hike. While working on these, we had a living document to plan the cards' text, effects, and other such details. It was worked on by the whole team, but since it was such an integral part of the game, it was a topic of much discussion, probably only second to the map.
Since this was the final draft of the cards and we only had 4 days of development (the 5th day was the showcase), I ended up having to create the illustrations and handwritten text on all the cards the night before. We planned to split the work for this to make it less difficult, but ended up sticking with me as the main artist for this part, for consistency. Other team members worked on the final video, voice-over, b-roll, rulebook, map, etc. In the end, though, our hard work paid off.
GAME TOKENS
Here are the main game tokens (excluding Golden Feathers). From left to right: Water (to put in the bucket card when filling it up), Flower (for when the sprout card is watered), and the Player 2 and Player 1 tokens.
Here's a picture showing the intended placement of the oddly shaped Water Token. It's meant to sort of act like a sticker to indicate you've filled your bucket or emptied it during play.
Here are the Golden Feather Tokens I made.
Here are the main game tokens (excluding Golden Feathers). From left to right: Water (to put in the bucket card when filling it up), Flower (for when the sprout card is watered), and the Player 2 and Player 1 tokens.
Above are the physical game tokens I made for the final prototype. They're pretty simple, and in the same style as the cards for consistency. The little bird tokens are made to stand up, and the water token (blue) is made to sort of work like a sticker in the bucket card. Unfortunately, people didn't seem to notice the bucket thing until we told them, but one playtester noted that they really liked the idea, and that it reminded them of their childhood, with those sticker matching games/books. Apparently having a tactile little detail like that is appreciated in board games, and something that he wished were in more. It's an idea I'm going to keep in mind for future games, as it seems like there's some intrinsic satisfaction some people can find with things like this.
RULEBOOK + DIAGRAMS
.png)
.png)
Full Rulebook PDF :
​For the rulebook, I mostly worked on editing and formatting text, plus making the diagrams. The text of the document was a group effort at the start, as we all worked on defining the game rules and functionality, but it was later taken over, for the most part, by two team members. The map was also a team effort, but me and one other team member ended up finalizing it. The small diagrams showing move types players can make was my idea, and it seemed to help players understand the game a little better during playtesting.
TAKEAWAYS
From working on A Shorter Hike over the course of Design Week, I learned about the importance of a confident, fair, and open-minded leader. As I was acting as a lead this time around due to my experience from prior design weeks, I led the conversations we had more often, and tried to facilitate discussions. It was a change for me, as in previous years, I was usually the one being led. Nevertheless, I did my best, and I developed my interpersonal skills, especially since I interacted with people I both did not know, and did not have similar personalities to some I had met before. There were a few conflicts due to clashing personalities and some people ignoring or talking over others, but we smoothed over things relatively well, I believe. Either way, I'm going to be able to use this experience in the future, whether that be during class projects, personal projects, or in the industry.
​​
Another area of personal development was in my game design skills specifically. Pretty obvious since it's a game design challenge, but still, I find that when we're forced to work with physical game design instead of digital, we're really forced to think about the basics of game design. When I worked on other games in a digital medium, I found myself getting sort of distracted with all the things that go into it, like programming, music, art integration, and such.​
When working in an analog medium, I had to think about what players who interact with physical game objects would find entertaining. It made me think harder about aspects of game design like game loops, for example, since with an analog medium, it's player controlled. This means that we can't automate actions to act against the player: they have to enable it themselves, and to do that, it has to make sense and motivate the player to continue playing. This, along with figuring out how to adapt enjoyable elements of an existing digital game to analog format, really made me appreciate both mediums, and better understand what can make games "good".
