Beat Sheet

Here's a beat sheet for my level. It was interesting trying out different shots for these trying to find what would work best. I color coded my thumbnails to so I could figure out what is what. 

Red: car

White: walls

Green: speed boost 

Gray: track

Yellow: turns

Blue: bumpers

Light cyan: ramp

Dark cyan: ramp walls

Orange: flippers

Sky blue: sky/open area 

Redo of Racing Level Design

I had a couple problems with my first design for my pinball level, so I reworked it and this one works much better. The one on the bottom is the one that I'm going with. Here's the design: 

I also had to do a beatsheet for my level and here is the first try: 

Stunts and Map

When researching car stunts, the one that most stuck out to me was the car jump. I think it's the most classic stunt you can pull in a car. That being said, my major stunt that I plan to have in my level is a jump. I looked up some classic car jumps and the one that stuck with me was the Blue's Brothers bridge jump scene. Here's the scene here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTOg4aYGtdY  When playing the levels from GAD's 2013 sophomore class, another thing that I liked was obstacles that came up from the ground. I would like to include include these into my level as well. The circular bumpers in pinball machines I think would make a good object for this obstacle.

The two stunts that I plan to incorporate are the jump and moving obstacles.

Everything in my level will push the pinball machine theme. I want this to look like your car has been miniaturized and put in a pinball machine. To do this, I plan to incorporate all the classic pinball elements. The ramps, arrows, and even obstacles will be based on a pinball machine. Rather than time of day, I was thinking that my pinball machine will be inside an arcade. Arcades are usually dark, so only the lights that the machine has itself would be lit. The terrain would be man made materials. Polished metal or smooth, shiny, plastic. For a color scheme, I was thinking black, with a lot of neon accent colors. Here's the idea for the color scheme I want to go for: http://www.romaintrystram.com/

My concept statement: Avoid the obstacles or die trying.

The idea for my level is an old pinball machine that someone decided to revive. They've gone in and added interactive elements to make it more dramatic. So pieces that are usually not interactive or only have limited interaction now are major parts of the game. Due to the added interactions, as you progress around the laps, more and more things become interactive. I plan the first lap to be pretty straight forward, then each lap becomes harder due to more interactive pieces. The first thing that will happen when racing around the level is actually on the second lap. When going over the ramp (for the first time due to the design of the laps) the car sets off a trigger that causes the middle of the bridge to collapse. Going around for the third lap, the car will hit another trigger that will cause all the circle bumpers to lower and rise from the ground randomly. I plan to make the jump very cinematic looking so it'll be the main focus.

The way that I originally had my layout was a figure 8, but it didn't let me incorporate all my obstacles smoothly. So what I did was make it so that the first lap is like an upside down question mark, the second is a figure 8, and the third is an upside down hook. Each lap an obstacle or barrier will appear that causes the track to change shape. The first lap will be simple driving, the second will have the bridge blowing up and the jump, and the third will having moving obstacles. The major terrain features will be the ramp/jump, the moving bumpers, and the flickers. Seeing as this is a pinball machine, I plan to incorporate a lot of light up arrows that will direct the player. You see a lot of them in actual pinball machines so I thought it would translate well. 

Game Commercial

One of the requirements for our board game were to make a commercial to advertise it. I figured cheesy 90's would be just what I wanted. Enjoy this majestic commercial.

Physical Board Game

It's finally done! Here are some pics of my physical board game. It's been a long time coming and I'm very happy with the results. Everything was supposed to reinforce the theme of my game, which was ghost investigating. I tried to make everything based off stuff you would use when you investigate (aka the blueprint board, the yellow sticky notes, the manila folder rule book). The cards I got printed off printerstuidos.com and they were definitely worth it. Very good quality for a good price. The player pieces are made of colored acrylic and are in the shape of ghosts! Also the dice glow in the dark. Just a lil added bonus. This was a great project! 

Print and Play

It's officially done. The print and play version of my game is now available for download. Go have fun with it!

Download here:

Ghost Investigators

Playtest Results

After getting everything in my game in a semi-working order, it was time for playtesting. Of course, within five minutes, it was already broken. Between bad grammar, confusing rules, and some weird mechanics that I have a lot to do. Here is a list of things that I need to fix and some suggestions/ideas on how:

• Going into rooms that don't affect a player need to be more interesting. I need to add something to them such as affect cards. I have figured that there should be about twenty cards (subject to change) and that they all shouldn't be bad. I plan on making ten semi-okay cards, five good cards, and five bad cards. 
• I got several suggestions that people wanted to be able to screw people over in the game. This lead to the idea of a malicious ghost idea. Basically, this ghost is controlled by everyone playing the game. For every turn that you make, the person to your right takes the same turn. If the malicious ghost lands on or goes past your character, you will either lose a turn or start back at the entrance. 
• The original character cards had the full description of the characters story. The beginning, middle, and end. I was suggested that this wasn't random enough and could make the game boring. So what I came up with is a way to make the stories and the rooms different each game. First I decided to make an easy, medium, and hard card. You have the basic character card that tells you which ghost you are looking for and the clue to their first room/easy card. Each time you find the right room, you then pull the next level of card until you figure out the hard card. This makes the game much more interesting. This also lead me to a problem that people could get the same room twice in a row. To make sure this doesn't happen, I made each difficulty card have different rooms from the one before them. 
• Rule wise, I need to make sure I discuss the player movement piece, how to pick the player movement piece, and where to place them at the beginning of the game. 
• I need to make it clear that the player to left has your ghost card. 
•  Last but not least, all the grammar. 

I learned a lot from playtesting and hopefully will be able to do more of it to make my game even better.