First Prototype
After discussing my initial ideas with the focus group I finally decided to plan my design as a grid similar to cluedo with rooms the players can move between in order to acquire the specific cards they require to escape from jail. The initial design proved to work well, with players navigating the board with minimal assistance. The rooms have been placed at specific distances from one another. The placement and room sizes have therefore been designed in a way that best suits the board-game. The first prototype has a grid size of 25 x 25 squares. This is the first large scale prototype I constructed for user testing. The image below shows the rooms, cards, grid and gives a rough idea of the layout. Rooms are represented by the square/rectangle shapes on board and the circles on the board represent the 8 escape routes.
Rooms
The design of the rooms were influenced by the layout of a real prison. The rooms and sizes of the rooms were designed solely for the purpose of the game. I felt that the placement and size suited the board and would make the room spacing more or less even and also ensure that the board is not too spacious. The rooms are the means to obtaining the cards, so in order for a user to get an escape card he must go to the corresponding room (guard room for the red escape card, warden room for the green blueprint card and laundry room for the black tool card).
Cell
The cell in the centre of the board was placed there for 2 reasons;
- Gives each user a similar starting point with all 4 sides offering their own advantages (one cell closer to escape cards and another closer to attack cards for example)
- To create a boundary around the middle of the board preventing users from travelling across the middle and ensuring the users travel around it to get to rooms, making the board less spacious and making it harder for the users to avoid one another.
The 8 Escape routes
I felt that giving players the option of 8 escape routes should make the game last a decent amount of time. I decided a good time limit would be 30-40 minutes and hoped that this prototype would allow for the game to last this long. Of course there is a chance of a user getting lucky and getting the cards required to escape very early but having only 8 options for escape should make escaping difficult.
The 8 escape routes are placed randomly around the board but sometimes adhere to certain locations on the board, for example the wall escape route is next to a wall and an entrance card is next to the entrance room.
Trade Room
The trade room is unique to the rest of the rooms offering users an opportunity to trade their escape cards in order to acquire a more suitable card for their deck.