High-Level Project Summary
We developed a 1 to -infinite- player cooperative resource board game in which the player fights against the events that could potentially damage a crew of 4 astronauts in a mission for getting the necessary resources to improve survivability in outer space. The game makes use of the different risks of outer space for the human body to teach players about the (sometimes overly exaggerated) effects they could cause on the crew, while they try to manage resources to survive and be able to research technologies to withstand all the major risks.The game gives an entertaining time for players while teaching them, awakening their interest for potential reseach in the future.
Link to Final Project
Link to Project "Demo"
Detailed Project Description
The project is a board game about the risks of outer space. It can be played alone or between and infinite ammount of players because it is centered in group decission making and not really in individual choices. Therefore, it is a co-op game.
You make the decissions for a crew of 4 space travelers who share a common stat pool of Sanity, Health and Strength. The objective of the game is to place your crew in three different planets in order to farm minerals, enough to get upgrades to be able to survive in outer space.
There are three planets: 1, 2 and 3; and, similarly, three minerals: alpha, beta and gamma, each in one of the three planets. These minerals can be used for a few different applications:
- Buying permanent upgrades.
- Buying specific stat boosts to avoid depleting any of the three stats.
- Buying random stat boosts for a smaller price than those in 2.
Surviving in space is hard, so the main goal is to get all the permanent upgrades and become the ultimate being. But it's not going to be as easy as farming all the minerals, because as long as you don't have the upgrades, you are vulnerable in space and can lose stats each turn (every action of a crew member) and each round (every time all crew members made an action).
We created the game with the old-fashioned pen and paper, a whiteboard and our imagination, so no fancy tools this time, however, we feel that a board game, as accesible to all ages as it is, can help teach children, teenagers and even adults about the harsh risks of outer space, and maybe light a small spark of interest in any of them to pursue a career or dedicate some time into researching solutions for these problems, to make space travel even easier in the future.
Of course, since we can't share a physical copy of the game, we share a design made in Canva with the necessary components for making the game (or simulating it).
Space Agency Data
We used NASA resources to create the risks, conditions and upgrades in the game.
https://www.nasa.gov/hrp/5-hazards-of-human-spaceflight
https://humanresearchroadmap.nasa.gov/risks/
Hackathon Journey
The experience was good, we learned a lot about space travel risks.
References
We used Canva and DaVinci Resolve.
Tags
#boardgame #space #spacetravel