PLANNING
The Process
Our task was to create a board game where players would not be allowed to use either speech, hearing or sight. After a short brainstorming session, we came up with the concept that felt like it could have a lot of tension to it: Managing air control without talking to each other. Having the fate of hundreds of people’s lives in your hands and just not having the basic means of communicating your needs to your companions. We found a good balance in the difficulty levels quickly and soon we were ready to go from a super simplistic first prototype to a more colorful playing board with actual pixel art-plane-chits.
Core Concept
Every turn new planes and helicopters turn up to request landing permission on your airport and you´ll have to try your best to coordinate with your colleagues in total silence; write on your “Calling” card which aircraft you are trying to contact and hope that all players made up the same plan as you. If you manage to avoid to many accidents and/or missed landings you are successful in your mission – we are yet to succeed in this mission.
My role
All of us shared the role of game designers and when we came to a point where we felt comfortable enough with what we had made I created all the artwork and wrote the rulebook for the game. Michelle and I developed the UI toghether.
My development
This project gave me a good opportunity to develop my pixel art making, something I will use in a lot of my future game developing, both analog and digital. Also, writing the rulebook was a good experience as I often have been opinionated about how rulebooks are written. As I’ve always seen myself as quite the educator this was a real trial, but in the end I feel like it was a success.
Problem solving
Creating all the pixel art I had to find how many pixels would make the artwork look good on a decently sized board and how to make a printable file from an Aseprite file. Also creating a movement system for the aircraft that wouldn’t allow for any totally uncontrollable crashes to occur was a big challenge that we overcame in the end – at least to our knowledge.
Here you´ll find everything you need to print and play your own copy of Planning:
Game Pieces
Rules
Game Board
