For my Spring 2022-23 Barrett Honors College creative project, I designed and created my own analog game. The created game is a tile-management game for 2-4 players called Plash. Players collect tiles and manipulate the board to complete goals and win the game. The paper for this project details the inspirations and research done for the game’s design, the game's design journey, and detailed instructions on how to play.

In Isle of Thrones, you must build up your kingdom to avoid being dominated by your opponent. Players start with a castle as their initial piece of land and draw cards from two decks, Event and Effect, which can influence the game. Each turn involves drawing an Event Card, playing Effect Cards, taking actions such as placing land tiles strategically on the board to expand territory, and potentially drawing more Effect Cards. Players earn points by placing land tiles with different named pieces of the same point value next to each other, and the game ends when the board is filled or when a player can no longer place more pieces. Land pieces can be destroyed and returned to the Land Pile, and the player with the most points at the end of the game wins.

This essay analyzes the immense popularity of the online video game The Sims through the lens of Sigmund Freud’s theories about desire. Specifically, it utilizes the concepts of wish fulfillment, the pleasure and reality principles, and the life and death drive to draw conclusions about why the game is so appealing. The two main aspects of the game that this essay analyzes are the game’s extreme customization of the mundane and its endless design. It asserts that these aspects provide a unique opportunity for players to choose to engage in wish fulfillment, in either the pleasure or the reality principle, or in either the life or the death drive. These choices are unique to the game because, in the real world, these principles are inextricably linked, so the separation of these principles from each other allows players to fulfill their desires in unique ways. The essay challenges Freud’s theories by exhibiting how these principles appear differently in a virtual space, compared to reality. It explores how these challenges improve the player experience by providing a space for them to explore their desires and drives in a safe and controlled setting in their customizable, virtual world.

Community Garden is a board game developed as a creative project for Barrett, The Honors College. The fully-functional board game's design allows relaxed gameplay between players with the zen imagery of a community garden. The written component of this thesis project details the mechanics of the final product, the design process, and the supporting documentation of the playtesting and research that went into developing Community Garden.

I love to work with numbers and data. Learning to solve equations and extrapolate points to predict outcomes will help me hone the talents I want to pursue a job based in an area I enjoy. Solving problems and creating solutions is like a puzzle or a game to me. Games are a big part of my life… from family game night to chess to computer games and math problems. This concept of problem-solving and solution-finding is what led me to this thesis. My Data Analytics and Supply Chain Management majors both involve these concepts as well, so revolving them around my thesis project helped to give me more experience that will help me in my future career. When looking into the field of games, people enjoy many different types around the world. Games can range anywhere from card and board games, to video games, and even sports and the Olympics. These are all considered games, and my goal in taking this thesis course is to become a game designer and start my journey into providing entertainment for my audience to play. Due to the already enormous amount of games in circulation today, I was creative and used the game-making skills I learned in this class when making my game. I focused on developing a strategy board game. Since I have played games all my life, I know that game development is not a simple task to undertake. That is why this Honors Thesis Course is important to me since it was beneficial to gain the skills necessary to create my own game. Making sure the game I created maintained the proper mechanics, story, aesthetic, and technology was paramount to creating an enjoyable board game. Figuring out a cohesive theme was also necessary to sufficiently market the game so people will want to add it to their collection, and more importantly, spend hours of their time playing. Those are skills I learned in my honors-directed study. I used my research by examining different genres of board games and determining which aspects in each influenced my own game design. Once I figured out the general concept of my project, I looked into how already existing games in this genre or other games that are related to my idea function and why they became popular. It was important to understand exactly how these games operate and function in order to be intuitive enough that most people can understand how to play them. I also had to make sure the game wasn’t so basic that people wouldn’t have fun playing them over and over. Once I figured these things out, I started construction of the game prototype, which served as the final deliverable for my Honors Thesis. My purchase list consists of the supplies I needed to construct my board game. I purchased a variety of materials that I needed for this project. I needed to make three copies of it, since my professor requested I give her and my second a copy if I was able. I needed a box, which turned out to be the most expensive single item on the list. The player cards I made doubled as a dice pad since I needed to use dice during the game. I bought plastic gemstones to simulate my currencies, of which I had five types. Four of those came from the same package while the diamonds I bought separately. The bags I bought are used for storage of each type of gemstone, and then they become the player bags when setting up the game. The little cubes I bought are for the quest boards so players can track their actions and certain quests. When constructing the board tiles as well as the quest boards, I needed to buy the wooden blocks, paint, brushes, glue, and lamination sheets. I first painted half of each block with either royal purple or gold to signify what tile it would become. Once I completed that, I printed and laminated the fronts of each tile and glued them together with the blocks. My goal for my thesis project was to create a board game that I would want to buy, and I believe I have accomplished this. Of course, many things will have to change when I work towards publishing my game, such as commissioning artwork, working on different marketing strategies, and lowering the cost of production per game. For a prototype though, I believe that I have done as well as I could with making as good a game as I could. Thank you for this opportunity, it was a lot of fun and I learned a lot that will help me in the future.