Which Monster will Steal Dracula's Amulet and Become the King of the Night?!

The concept of my board game that I have chosen has changed a tad from my original ideas, but I wanted to keep the classic movie monster theme from my earlier concepts.  Basically, the idea is to play as one of the four different monsters that player can choose from and using cards that are given to you at the start and are received each turn to traverse Dracula's Castle to find and obtain his all powerful crystal, and then to exit the board without anyone stealing it from you using their cards.

As mentioned before, this game takes place in Dracula's castle which is located on the border of Transylvania and Wallachia in Romania and is actually called the Bran Castle in real life.  The novel Dracula has the date that the novel takes place is in the 1890s, which is the time frame that I will will be using for my board game as well.  The board, box, and cards will be decorated with the artistic aesthetic of the time, as well as the board being illustrated as Dracula's Castle and having the style and color scheme of this time frame.



I want to go into a more cartoony style with this game, referencing to Luigi's Mansion 2: Dark Moon and  Hotel Transylvania for reference for an appealing cartoon style for classic movie monsters and environments. I want to create something that looks fun and whimsical, but still keep it relatively "spooky" for children, as I want this games demographic to be for Families or a groups of children/teenagers to play.  I want my color palette to have lots of purples, reds, and yellows/oranges for contrast. This give the board nice color language that adds to the spooky flair.

After reading the wiki about B.F Skinner and his work (here) its easy to see that most video games follow these ideas in psychology. The main idea is, if something good happens, a person will usually repeat this action, but if something bad happens, a person will usually avoid it. So for games this obviously applies to rewards such as power ups and health, and to conflicts such as enemies - unless the enemies are worth the reward that a player can get from playing them.  The reward might be health or an idea - or sometimes the reward is just being able to progress.

Just something to think about

Some ideas for the upcoming print and play game we have to design. I have two favorite ideas so far - one that is about space ships/space exploration that is card based but the cards are laid down to be the board like one of the example print and play games that one of my peers brought in a while ago.

The other is based around classic movie monsters in a movie theater trying to scare the most people and collect items for points. The board and cards together would look like movie theater seats and it would play similar to candyland.

I feel that the first idea doesn't have a ton of charm but the mechanics might be fun to explore, and the second idea isnt as complex game mechanic wise, but it would be easy to make a charming aesthetic for the game.

Check out the Resident Evil 7 Trailer - It looks like this Resident Evil game is going to be a lot more like some of the earlier entries in the series, with dark and creepy environments/monsters rather than just being a zombie shooter like some of the latest entries. Needless to say - I'm very excited to see what the full game will be like.

Despite the uninspired name, Zombie in my Pocket makes for a decently fun time if you are alone and have a few minutes to spare.

 The basic story and goal of the game is that you the player are stuck in a zombie infested house and need to survive and kill all the zombies.  You do this by collecting the Zombie Totem in the Evil Temple and then taking it to the graveyard. 

The player does this by creating and traversing the enviroment. You have two stacks of shuffled face down indoor and outdoor area cards.  Setting aside the patio card and starting from the foyer, each turn the player lays down an indoor card thus opening up new areas for the player to explore and draw a Dev card. These Dev cards tell the player what event happens at their specific time in the game whether it be zombies attacking the player, finding an item, or a random made event. The player will try to survive starting with one action/combat point and six health points to finish the main goal of the game and kill all the zombies.  These points can be changed with items that can be found when drawing a Dev card, but only two items can be held at once and one one weapon can be in use at one time. These items increase your overall health or increase your action/combat points helping you fight zombies. When you do get into combat with zombies, to determine how much the zombies can hurt you, do the equation (# of zombies - attack/combat points = damage received).  The math is simple so this doesn't stop the game flow at all thankfully.

The game plays in a 2D flat space, but the player is allowed in each room to cower, which gives up a turn in exchange for three health points.  There are also nesting spaces in the game, as the only exit to the outside is from the dining room square.  The outdoor and indoor spaces are only allowed to be traversed from one another through the dining room square as well.  Each square has a set number of doorways on it that show where the player can place another area square.  If the area square they pick makes it so the player cannot move the next turn, three zombies will bust through a wall of the players choice and create a new opening to lay down a new area card.  This is a very intelligent design choice, as some rooms - such as the storage closet - only have one way in and out and that could get the player stuck fairly easily. 

Most of the items in the game - with the exception of the evil room with the zombie totem, and graveyard cards - come from these Dev cards. These cards are shuffled, and then the top two cards are discarded for an added level of chance. Starting the game at 9pm, these cards change the time by one hour every time they are drawn.  Along with the time mechanic, these cards also give the player the events that will happen to them at the specific times they are drawn adding a new layer of chance. 

Most of the chance and risk in this game come from these cards, as they are randomly selected, along with the outdoor and indoor terrain cards that are also randomly selected. Each turn the player can move a space and draw a Dev card, or cower and regain health but do nothing letting an hour pass.

Overall this game isn't half as cheesy or bad as its name suggests. It plays very similarly to a D&D match, but instead having very limited roleplaying elements and the dungeon master be a deck of cards left up to chance. This chance progresses most of the game leaving only strategy to the player which is easy to understand and pretty fun. Also just as a side note, in comparison to other print and play games, this game is easily one of the easiest I've seen to put together, literally making it the size to fit in your pocket, even the instruction manual!