Postmortem

TL;DR: Good concept, needs some work but has a lot of potential.

After completing this project and playtesting it, I figured I would share my thoughts on how making it went.

Get ready for a lot of text...

From the very beginning, the idea for this project was an experiment. It does not follow the conventions of typical board games but tried something more outside the box. Speed-based board games are rare for a good reason; it is difficult to move the pieces around the board that quickly, hence why most board games are turn-based. My group members and I decided to try doing what few had done before to understand the shortcomings of real-time board games and maybe make a plan to overcome them.

Playtesting it went exactly how I expected it. While the concept was good, moving the pieces around the board was pretty cumbersome, especially considering all the pieces were made out of paper. There is always going to be some element of difficulty in moving the pieces in a game like this, but it was more awkward than we would have liked. 

Despite this, I still believe this idea has potential and that this project is sort of a "proof of concept"-- while not executed to perfection by any stretch of the imagination, the fundamental idea is solid.

While the most effective solution might be to just turn it into a video game, which would fix all of the main issues with it, I think the more interesting solution is to keep it as a board game and see just how far this idea can go.

Ideas for improvement:

-Make the board way bigger and likely combine all the mini-boards into one board. Another idea is to make four separate mini-boards that combine into a large track at one point so players can switch between their own board and the big board.

-Instead of spaces, have a track where the horses can "run"  so that they don't easily come out.

-Make everything out of plastic, not paper. We didn't have nearly enough time for this-- this game was made in 3 weeks, so of course it is a little rough around the edges--but it would be a huge improvement nonetheless.

-Make the horses and hurdles bigger so they aren't so easy to lose.

-Rework how the upgrades work. Maybe have a plastic marker on a number line (like the score marker for the game Outbreak) to eliminate the need for pencils.

I really enjoyed working on this project because I like unconventional ideas that aren't afraid to try what others shy away from. Making this game taught me some things about the shortcomings of speed-based board games and how I could maybe overcome them given more time.  I want to take this idea and run with it (pun intended) even if making it digital would be more efficient and more effective.  

Maybe the reason people tend not to make speed-based board games is not that they don't work. Maybe it's just that no one has found a good way to deal with their limitations. Icarus fell from the sky not because flying that close to the sun was impossible but that the particular adhesive he used (wax) just wasn't suited to it. With the right adaptations, Icarus could have flown much, much higher.

I know that not very many people will see this (and if they have, no one has gotten this far), but I wanted to write this anyway because I want to improve.

-slvrfshston