- Setting the Stage
It’s May of your Senior Year at Stanford, and you’re just a few weeks from graduating. Maybe you’re co-terming (you probably are), or maybe you aren’t. Either way, things won’t be quite the same soon. In your last few weeks as a Stanford undergrad, you’ve found yourself daydreaming of simpler times and walking down memory lane of your time here at the Farm…
- Synopsis
Relive your Stanford experience — one chaotic year at a time.
In this nostalgic board game, players start as freshmen and progress through all four undergrad years, landing on event spaces that trigger mini-games, trivia challenges, or “Choose Your Narrative” moments. Each activity is related to a real location at Stanford that a player lands on, and earns you points for winning games and shapes your personal journey (ex. Choosing your major, through the Farm.
From Freshman NSO to Sophomore Formal and Junior Year Career fair, the end of each year features one big group mini game that brings everyone together. Some challenges are collaborative, others competitive — give your best startup pitch, answer an Arbor trivia question, or design your dream fountain for fountain hopping. Decisions made early in the game may resurface later, making each playthrough dynamic and full of surprises.
Will you graduate as valedictorian once you make it to the end with the most points? Regardless of the outcome, you’ll leave with a uniquely Stanford story to tell.
- Stories
Freshman Stories
- New Student Orientation
- FACES
- Beyond Sex Ed
- Marriage Pact
- Freshman 15
- Going to the gym for the first time / doing laundry for the first time
- Crom / Yacht Formal
- Greek Life rush
- Roommate horror
Sophomore Stories
- The fall of the freshmen friend group
- Club fair
- Career fair
- Marriage pact
- FMOTQ
- Sophomore Formal
- Choosing your major
Junior Stories
- Finding an internship
- Career deliberations
- Going abroad
Senior Stories
- Dinner on the Quad
- Row Sigs
- Grad pics
- Off-campus travels
- Senior nights
- Tone
Amusing, Nostalgic, Exciting, Belonging – a playful exploration of the true Stanford experience.
- Setting
The Farm! AKA Stanford
- Gameplay
The gameplay will consist of a hybrid collaborative-competitive board game set at Stanford University, where all players travel together through the different phases of their college experience, from freshman year to graduation, on a shared tandem bicycle. While players move collectively across the game board, they compete individually by completing location-based challenges on digital devices and accumulating points.
It will work in the following format:
- Players take turns rolling a die to move the tandem bicycle along a physical game board that represents a map of the Stanford campus.
- The board is divided into four major sections, each representing a different academic year: Freshman, Sophomore, Junior, and Senior.
- Each space on the board corresponds to a real or imagined Stanford location (e.g., Treehouse, Green Library, Lake Lag, Stern Dining, Frost Amphitheater).
When the bicycle lands on a space, the active player must complete a challenge tied to that location. These challenges may include:
- Trivia Cards (e.g., answer a question about Stanford history or culture at Treehouse),
- Mini-games (e.g., invent a new dish to serve at Stern Dining, or guess the song currently “playing” at Frost Amphitheater)
- Choose Your Narrative Cards (e.g. picking traits to shape your Stanford character, which may affect your future decisions and challenge results)
Other players often participate in judging, voting, or competing in head-to-head challenges, keeping everyone engaged on every turn.
At the conclusion of each academic year section, all players must work together or compete in a four-player collaborative game. These year-end challenges reflect key milestones in a Stanford student’s journey. Examples may be:
- End of Freshman Year – Declaring a Major: Players complete a personality quiz or stereotype-matching activity to “discover” their major, which is a part of their “Choose Your Own Narrative” journey and which may influence future gameplay or point multipliers.
- End of Sophomore Year – Friendship Challenges: Players are challenged on how well they know each other, including getting-to-know-you and social deduction games.
- End of Junior Year – Internship Scramble: A fast-paced game requiring players to pitch themselves for fictional internships using random prompts.
- End of Senior Year – Graduation Challenge: A mix of memory, trivia, and storytelling, where players reflect on their in-game “Stanford journey” and compete for final points.
While the players move together physically across the board, each player collects points throughout the game by successfully completing tasks and winning challenges. The player with the most points by the end of senior year is declared the winner—most likely to succeed.
- Key Challenges for Design
We want to ensure that the narrative architecture of the game portrays a journey through Stanford like a real student would experience. It will be tricky to design minigames and challenges that reflect a Stanford experience, but that are also playful, engaging, and not too complex, as they are supposed to be smaller experiences that are a part of the main story. We also want to make sure the challenges are fun and purposeful for our players, not too challenging or serious. Ultimately, everyone’s Stanford experience is different, so we don’t want our game to erase that.
- Key Challenges for Art
Creating a stylistic board that artfully encapsulates a wide variety of realistic Stanford locations as well as our nostalgic and playful tone. We want to make sure that our game board and digital challenges maintain a consistent theme throughout. An additional challenge will be considering how the digital platform will look, perhaps keeping it more simple if the physical game board is more complex.
- Who is this for?
This is for Stanford Undergraduates, or those who want to experience the student life of a Stanford Undergraduate. This should be both an engaging and exciting experience for both students who are new to Stanford and particularly nostalgic for those who are reaching the end of their time on campus.
Appendix: Individual Deliverables (Moodboard + Playlist):
Hannah: https://mechanicsofmagic.com/2025/05/05/individual-deliverable-p2-01-hannah-yu/
Abbie: https://mechanicsofmagic.com/2025/05/05/checkpoint-1-individual-submission-abbie-maemoto/
Emma: https://mechanicsofmagic.com/2025/05/06/individual-team-member-deliverable-emma/
Daphne: https://mechanicsofmagic.com/2025/05/06/checkpoint-1-individual-concept-doc-daphne/
