For the past few weeks, I have been working on a board game. It has been an exciting journey. Got my creative juice running. The link to the game can be found in here. I call the game “Human Spanish Conjugator™” for now as I need something fun to help me practice verb conjugation. Below is a short journal on how I go about creating this little game of mine.
I started by designing the score sheet. That basically set out the fundamental of the game. I wanted something that looks sleek and functional. I think I have more or less got it.
Designing the board was a lot harder. At first I wanted to use dice to randomize the combination of person versus tense during the game play. But it lacks the spacial dimension of maneuvering across the board – an opportunity to strategize beyond conjugating Spanish verbs. So I eliminate the use of dice and preset the questions (as tiles on the board). I wrote a generator (using OpenOffice) to randomize a set of combination (98 in total) with the possibility of placing emphasis on certain tenses or persons (such as practice more on ‘you’ and ‘I’ forms). To create the first prototype, it took me a while to manually copy and paste each tile onto the image. 98 times. Later on, I found a way to copy the pre-randomized tiles across to the game board, in one go. Imagine, how many randomized game boards I can create in the future!
As for the cards, initially I (or rather Cynthia) wrote the verbs on paper. While it functions as intended, it does not look sexy. I thought long and hard and have decided to print them out and stick them onto blank name cards. And why stop at the verb? Why not print out the answers as well? Save us time to verify our answers. Tons of frantic copy and paste but I think both Cynthia and I love the end result (of that deck of 63 cards). Cynthia did the actual cutting of the papers and pasting onto the blank cards by the way.
OK, now that this new prototype is out, time for a test drive some time this week. I am hoping that this game is as fun as I think it is.
Related Article: Human Spanish Conjugator – A Board Game (Beta)
Categories: Linguistic · My Hobbies
Tags: board game9 Comments
Wow bro! You manage to surprise me time and time again with your propensity to create new things! Unfortunately, I must admit I am a bit lost when I look at the game board
How do you like the look of my new site?
Mark – Wow, your site is very pretty. You ought to help me out to beautify what I have here!
Ya, the game board could be a bit confusing if you are new to Spanish verb conjugation. For learners, it is pretty intuitive. The tiles provide the “person” and “tense”. The card provides the “verb”. He he he.
Amigo, puedo jugar? Sounds interesting! Haha…
PK – Hola amigo! You should try it out and let me know. Jejeje. Or we could test this out together.
Si si… si tenemos tiempo, jugamos tu board game!
PK – Ha ha ha … thanks for your enthusiasm. Let me do some intense “testing” and see where I can fine tune the game. Keeping you in the loop!
goodness Wilf! what your mind can come up with amazes and humbles me at the same time!
G – Eh. And you to me
It is really a matter of practicality (and urgency). We really need something fun to practice on our Spanish grammar. Ha ha ha.
[...] If you recall earlier on, I have released a beta version of a board game to help learners like Cynthia and I to practice [...]