Deepspace Delivery Dash
Game Design | Physical Prototyping | User Research
With Claire Partridge
Background: There are few things in this world that fascinate me more than games. I have played games my whole life, studied games through college, and recently began to take the idea of designing games more seriously. My journey of being a game designer really took off in my final year of undergrad at Pomona when I took a "Analog Game Design" course. For our final project, my friend Claire (who was the president of the prestigious Claremont Board Game Group) and I set off to merge elements from board games we both enjoyed and create a fully-fleshed-out board game experience that we hoped might one day find itself on the shelves of local games stores.
Challenge: How might we make a board game that is easy-to-learn, stimulating, novel, and replayable?
Choosing the Theme
We had a strong vision of what emotions we wanted our game to invoke and some ideas about potential mechanics, but we had no idea what the theme of our game would be. In an effort to get started, we used this technique: we each wrote down a numbered list of 6 "things" and each rolled a die to randomly choose one of those things. We mashed them together – and that was our theme.
1. Underwater
2. Garden
3. Tennis
4. Outer Space
5. Otters
6. Pipes
1. Ghosts
2. Food
3. Lobster fishing
4. Mining
5.Castle
6. Christmas
"DoorDash" in Outer Space
Designing the Gameplay
We had some basic ideas related to gameplay, like a shapeshifting board, a variable setup, a grid movement system, and a central order-fulfillment mechanic.
We struggled for a couple weeks balancing the amount of food items available and restaurants on the board. The hardest part was determining which restaurants sold which food items.
Prototyping
We made a prototype early on out of printed triangular grids, torn scraps of paper, and game pieces from Terraforming Mars. We used many prototypes throughout our play testing process.
This is the second iteration of the prototype – the first was completely hand-drawn.
A later stage iteration of the prototype which added artwork to the board an wormholes to more easily move far distances.
The first prototype of the gas mechanic, which dictated how far players could move before needing to visit a gas station, worked like a gas meter that could be refilled. In the final version of the game, each player has identical hands of Gas Cards that can be played to move and redrawn at gas stations.
Playtesting
We playtested Deepspace Delivery Dash many, many times, both alone as designers and with groups of external play testers.
Claire and I playing an early version during one of our many late-night playtest and design meetings.
A group of students playtesting while we observed.
Producing
Once we had finished designing, playtesting, balancing, and iterating, we began composing our final prototype. We would make this by hand, so it would be of pre-preproduction quality, yet we wanted it to be impressive for our final presentation and first public playtest. After I drew all of the art files, we began to work on producing the physical thing.
In Deepspace Delivery Dash, the board itself moves around frequently. So, the game pieces needed to stick to the board somehow so they would not fall off or be accidentally shifted while moving the board.
We decided the best option was to magnetize the pieces to the board.
A game board tile upside-down, with all pieces attached and undisturbed.
The final prototype near completion.
The game has many different types of cards with an assortment of front and back faces. To print them in high quality, quickly, and cheaply, we used perforated business card paper and a normal Inkjet printer.
Final Product
Deepspace Delivery Dash is a competitive delivery-fulfillment game for 2 to 4 players.
Players must race around the galaxy picking up food from restaurants and delivering it to customers' addresses before their friends in order to score the highest number of points by the end of the night. Be careful, because gas runs out quickly in outer space! Players must manage their delivery-spaceship's gas reserves, fill up at gas station, jump through wormholes, and shift the fabric of spacetime itself to travel around the board as efficiently as possible. Cargo crates among the floating space junk offer power-ups to give players the competitive edge!
Deepspace Delivery Dash features a fully magnetic board that changes shape throughout the game and a variable setup, so no two play sessions are alike!
Claire and I hope to publish this game for real one day, so we're keeping the full rule-set close to our chest. If you want to learn more about the game, please reach out!