Orienting new design students through board game play
My Role
Game Systems Designer
Playtest Analyzer
Visual Designer
My Role
Angel Allen
Miles Ainsworth
Ghost with the Most introduces new Loyola New Orleans design students to the department lifestyle by gamifying orientation.
Acting as designers trapped on campus, players race to complete assignments and escape the department floor before “the ghost” (a Loyola design legend) picks them off one by one. Along the way, they navigate the department’s real layout and encounter assignments that await them in later years.
This project’s brief was to create a game that addressed a problem within Loyola’s design department.
Context
First-year design students felt lost: Literally and socially.
They didn't know where classrooms were, had little connection with upperclassmen, and had no sense of what to expect from future coursework.
Solution
Disguising orientation as a game
Based the game on the department's real floor plan, using tasks that reflect actual future assignments. All tied together through a spooky, gothic New Orleans aesthetic.
Player Audience
Designed for Loyola design students but accessible to anyone. The rules require no prior knowledge, even if some details reward those in on the Loyola-related jokes.
Core experience
Drawing inspiration for an exciting, thrilling, and chaotic gameplay
While writing the rules, we knew we wanted to create chaos: where everyone is yelling and hollering. The type of energy when your friends bring UNO, but everyone has different rules.
So we looked at games where you outmaneuver, plot against, and then conspire with your previous opponents.
Games with a "secret killer"
Werewolf
Among Us
Games where you “switch sides”
Sharks and Minnows,
(a swimming pool game)
Bringing it to life
Creating characters, tasks, and power dynamics
10 possible player avatars took form as student stereotypes (Procrastinator, Student Athlete, Party Animal, etc.), each with their strategically balanced unique advantages and disadvantages.
Based on real Loyola design assignments, we spread tasks across the board for players to complete, either solo or together.
A few of our characters and task cards. Cards designed by Miles Ainsworth.
Low-fidelity prototype & pilot playtesting
Our first prototype used modular rooms and paper pieces to allow us to fine-tune spacing, room arrangement, and game dynamics.
Playtesting low-fidelity prototype
Players took way too long to cross the board
Too many spaces and moving pawns with the dice-roll method slowed gameplay, creating bored players. By making each square larger (resulting in fewer spaces), players crossed the board faster, and gameplay maintained its momentum.
Larger and few spaces allow pawns to move faster across the board.
Designing & assembling the official board and game pieces
After a few pilot tests, I designed our flat board graphics. With support from my teammates for wall and game cards, we then constructed our 24” x 28” board out of foam core and paper graphics.
Game Dynamics: The Basics
How to Play
Upon the game’s start, players select a student avatar and are dealt task assignment cards, with one ghost "task" card hidden among them.
Students must complete their homework to survive and escape
Student players maneuver around the board to complete their assignments and eventually escape through an exit without being “killed” by a ghost.
The "Ghost" must eliminate all students to win
The player who is dealt the ghost task card becomes the first "Ghost" and must hunt down all the students before they escape the floor, one by one.
When a ghost “kills” a student, they’re resurrected, not as a student but as a ghost player. Then, all of the phantom players work together to eliminate the remaining students.
Official playtesting
Adjustments for a more intuitive and efficient gameplay
With lots of yelling and laughing in playtests, it became obvious that students enjoyed the game, but they showed some areas for improvement.
Our group creating the high-fidelity prototype.
Adding Student secret passageways to balance Ghost advantages
Without spending time completing tasks, ghost players eliminated students too easily, ending the game before anyone could escape. Student secret passageways were added to balance power distribution.
Adding a game manual & simplifying game rules
Although it wasn't in the original scope of the project, we created a short instruction manual covering all game mechanics and rules in simpler language because our rules were lengthy and complex.
Matching characters with starting icons
Avatars were each assigned a starting point marked by a matching icon. Feedback showed some pairings were unclear, so we reworked the icons to make each match more intuitively.
What I Learned
Creating something functional is one type of challenge, but creating something truly enjoyable, that people actually want to play with joy and laughter, is an entirely different type of hard.
With our team, I’m happy to say that we succeeded in creating a game that gets people as fired up as UNO.