Artist Statement
Builder Blitz is the game that you bring out when you’re at a family gathering and you want to pass the time and bring up the energy in the room. As a spin on the well known game of Pictionary, it creates an environment of comedy and competition as teams compete to build prompts and get 5 in a row on the game board.
We bring Pictionary from 2D drawings into the 3D space by asking players to build the prompts out of clay. Each builder is given 1 minute to build and have their team correctly guess as many prompts as possible. But this task is made even more unpredictable by adding an Action Card that can help or hurt your team by doing things like awarding extra building time or requiring that the builder use only one hand for the entirety of their turn. We also make scorekeeping more physical and visual by introducing a board reminiscent of tic-tac-toe in which the winner is awarded when one team gets 5 in a row.
Concept Map
Initial decisions about Formal Elements and Values
When we first began working on the game, it was “Pictionary but with legos”. The basic idea was that the game would be a team vs team game where each round, a team member would build a lego block structure based on a prompt card that the rest of the team would use to guess the word on the prompt card. The builder would try to get the team to guess as many prompts as possible within a minute. The teams would continue this process, and the winner would be the team with the most points, where a point is awarded for a correctly guessed prompt card. Over time and playtesting, we kept the core of the game consistent while editing the formal elements to create a better play experience.
Testing and Iteration History
- Legos v Play-doh?
Our first iteration of our game was a split prototype- we had one version that used legos and one that used play-doh. We playtested these two versions first within our team in a 2v2 match – we quickly found that legos are much more difficult to build recognizable structures with due to the limited way that you can construct items with the particular block pieces. Crucially, their inability to form recognizable round shapes became an issue, and made guessing the actual word prompt very hard, and attempting to write word prompts that were not round shapes was fairly limiting. On the other hand, the play-doh was much faster to build with and allowed for more building flexibility and more easily recognizable structures. After this prototype, we decided to continue with the building element using play-doh.
- What kinds of prompts should we include?
The next area of the game that we explored was what kinds of prompts to include. We created several categories of prompts, inspired by Pictionary. The categories were Person (genie, Abraham Lincoln, etc), Thing (flower, truck, tree, etc), Action (run, jump, etc), and Place (bedroom, movie theater, etc). We playtested this in class using hand written cards and play-doh. The feedback we received was that some types of prompts were more difficult to build than others. The Action category was particularly too abstract to convey, so we decided that verb prompts should be excluded. The Place category was also a little bit more abstract and required people to build more things in order to convey the whole thing. For example, with the prompt bedroom, the builder attempted to build a bed and a table to show that there are multiple things in the room, but the guessers were not able to understand what was being displayed holistically. As a result, we also excluded the Place category from the prompts going forward. The Person and Thing categories were more easily buildable and guessable, making their inclusion in the game more enjoyable, so we kept our prompts within those categories going forward.
One other thing that we noticed during this playtest was that it was difficult for people to guess what was being built when it could really include anything in the world. There were a few rounds in which no one was able to guess what was being built at all. We worried that without knowing beforehand what prompts are available to build, and therefore guess, it would be too open ended making it very difficult to guess, especially when the people building are not always the most artistically talented.
- Add in Codenames set up?
Following this playtest, we had two main concerns: 1) Was our game just “Pictionary/Charades with Play-doh”? And 2) Are the possible prompts too open ended, making it too difficult to guess? In order to tackle these questions, we brainstormed some changes to how the flow of play worked. One idea we decided to experiment with was a Codenames-esque prototype, where we created a 5×5 grid of prompt cards, and teams would “win” a card by deciding to build it and having their team guess the prompt. The goal would be to get 5 in a row before the other team. This way, the guessers would be able to see 25 possible prompts that their builder could be making and make more educated guesses based on those.
During this playtest, we saw that knowing the prompts made the game too easy, and therefore less exciting. Once a team was able to guess one prompt, it became very easy to guess what was being built next because the goal of the game was to get 5 in a row. The time it took to guess what was being built became almost non-existent and a team was able to win within a single turn, supplying no back and forth between the teams – effectively losing all sense of competition.
After reflecting on this prototype and playtest, we came away with a few questions to further our brainstorming and development. Can we still show the prompts beforehand and maintain a sense of difficulty in guessing? What element can we add to the board to make it less obvious what the builder is making of the available prompts?
- Introduce challenge cards and a Tic-Tac-Toe kind of board?
After more brainstorming, we replaced the 5×5 grid of prompt cards with a 5×5 grid of empty squares, deciding that people would still be able to guess what was being built eventually, and that the time that it took to do so made the game more exciting and funny when people built things that looked nothing like the prompt. After receiving feedback from a TA, we also added in a new gameplay element – challenge cards in order to add a new level of difficulty and further derivation from the original game of Pictionary. The challenge cards either benefit or harm the teams – they can provide more time, have a player build behind their back, build with their eyes closed, etc. Now, the flow of play would be that a team would select a challenge for the round, then pick the prompt cards and begin their turn adhering to the challenge. The next team would do the same. When players won a point by guessing correctly, they got to place a token on the 5×5 grid, and the first to 5 in a row would win.
We playtested this iteration in class, and found that players really enjoyed the challenge cards, finding that they added a fun new element to the gameplay. They also reflected that there could be more of certain challenge cards – the players found some word cards much higher difficulty, and felt that they should be able to skip these cards, earn more points for them, or have them eliminated to create a more even challenge level for the prompt cards.
- Final tweaks to challenge cards?
The feedback from our fourth iteration indicated that skip cards were very valuable to the teams, and those that we playtested with requested that there be more added into the challenge card deck. As a result, we added in the skips to the rules – each team is allowed 3 skips per game at minimum, while also keeping some in the challenge card deck that can be picked and added to the number of total skips a team is allowed.
We playtested this with a group outside of the course – friends of one of the team members. This playtest led to players finding that the 5×5 grid was a somewhat uneven playing field. They felt that if one team had a very good round early on, earning 3 or more points, they essentially won the game, making it a moot point to continue.
Following this reflection, we realized that we needed to add more ability to manipulate the board throughout the game. To do this, we decided to implement more challenge cards, now named Action cards, that allow players to edit the board – remove opposing team’s token and more “steal” cards that allow players to guess the other team’s prompts. Additionally, we implemented a rule that for every two points a team earns, they can place two tokens as normal OR remove one of the opposing team’s token’s from the board. This would make it so that a team can either choose to advance their own board presence or hinder their opponent’s depending on where they stand within the game.
Builder Blitz
What comes in the box
- Empty 5×5 grid game board
- Pile of prompt cards
- Pile of Action cards
- Point markers
- **Playdough not provided
Rules
- Start of game, decide which team goes first by playing rock-paper-scissors
- 60 second turns
- Start of turn
- Building team nominates one builder from their team
- The builder draws an action card which stays in effect the entire round
- Once the builder draws the first prompt card, the timer starts
- The builder’s goal is to build the prompt for their team to guess
- Once a prompt is guessed, provided there is still time left on the timer, the builder draws another card
- Once there is no time left on the timer, the team can either place a token for each of their correctly guessed prompts or spend two correctly guessed prompts to remove an opponent’s token from the board
- The first team to get 5 cards in a row wins
- If a builder ends the turn with a prompt unguessed, that card is burned
- In the event of a stalemate, the team with the most tokens on the board wins
Video of Final Playtest
Game-Box
The game-box is a 12 inch by 12 inch by 4 inch cube.
Print-and-Play-1
To play the game using the print-and-play, print the PDF double sided and in color. Then, cut out all the action cards, build cards, board markers, and game board. Included in the PDF is a copy of the game rules to get started. Playdough is not provided in the print-and-play.
