My First Post - Summer Project

This is my first ever blog post so please bear with me.

Over the summer we were set a project to start the Interactive Arts course at MMU, to create a game that could be played by 6 players and had to reflect our interests and show an element of creativity. I struggled. So instead of thinking of a game I thought of what interested me so, having done worked based on books before, I decided to base my game on 'The Wizard of Oz' as the theme of a quest or challenge ran through lots of games I researched.

                                                                        Front Cover Carving
Because of this I could then base the game on events that happen through the book. I chose the key moments:

• The Twister in Kansas (anagrams);
• Landing in Munchkinland (pairs);
• The Yellow Brick Road (tiddly winks);
• The Emerald City (trivia);
• The Wicked Witch of the West (throwing).

The games are all quick and simple so that it is easy to get through the whole game as I was conscious that it would need 6 people playing and so couldn't drag on. It also meant I could do a fair amount of painting which is something I have been wanting to do again for a while (as well as trying carving, as I did). Each page was illustrated with the relevant characters and I used bright and bold colours to keep it interesting to look at.

Pages from the game and counters

For the players to win, because it wasn't like a board game I made Oz Balls (green salt dough balls) that the players would collect through each game and also made pouches from brown felt to keep the balls in.

When we played the game I thought it went quite well but more thought could have been put into the games to make them more stimulating to play but admittedly I thought more about the look of the game than the game itself.