Designing a Board Game for the home.

Not too long before the Covid-19 lock-ins, I came up with a game to use with my son's Disney Tsum Tsum figure collection. I wanted my son to have a way to play with the toys besides just rolling them around on the floor or throwing them around the room. The challenge was coming up with a way for more than 2 people to play the game so I could involve his cousins or his friends if they came over. First I thought about some of the other board games and the designs they used. The first design I figured would work was the "Wagon Wheel" board design, used by several games including Trivial Pursuit.

  Once I had the board I began figuring out the rules for the game. I had to account for all the different types of figures and who they represented. Then once I figured out the rules, I had to playtest it. I borrowed a board from my sister and started playing games with my son. He really enjoyed helping me. I then played a few games with my wife and son and then tested it with my nieces and nephews. It turned out to work really well. I had taken into account the different roles and how to include special abilities depending on the character and how "building your team" was a factor for winning in the game.

    I was pleasantly surprised by how popular it was with my son, nieces and nephews.

 I tried to spread the word by first creating a page on Facebook and then on Pinterest.  I posted on several Disney Tsum Tsum pages and groups and it seemed to have a positive response. I even contacted Disney to see if they wanted to adopt it.  Disney contacted me back but said they were not interested. I later found out that Disney had discontinued the Tsum Tsum figures and was not producing them anymore.   

  So I put it aside until the Covid pandemic happened and I pulled it out and played it with my family and even did a Google Meet with my nieces and nephews to play it through video chat. It actually went well.  

Recently, I was able to play a board game (Munchkin) with my son during his time at home because of Covid-19, and for fun, we tried playing with his LEGO Minifigures. He really enjoyed it.  I shared it on a couple of Lego pages and other builders seemed to jump on this.  I was on the Lego Ideas page and saw someone had created the idea for a "Settlers of Catan" board game.  This made me think of my Tsum Tsum board game and the idea came to me on how I could adjust it for Lego.

   I decided to revamp the idea for my son's LEGO Minifigures. The premise of the game is almost identical.  The game can have between 2-6 players. It uses a "wagon wheel" designed board, though if you have something else that has a similar space design, you can use that too. You roll two 6-sided dice for moving around the board.  The goal of the game is to move around the board with your figures and collect blocks at each base, once you have collected all the blocks and build a tower and your figures get to the end of the game, you win. 

The key to the fun of the game is that the Minifigures you chose to play with will have special abilities and you don't just play with 1 you have 4 Minifigures on your team. The special abilities come into play with the dice roll and interacting with the other players.  In addition, with the "wagon wheel" design, is that you move past the starting point for each player.

  When you get to that base, you get a lego piece.  The idea is that as your figure moves around the board, you collect pieces to a tower that you will build for your 4 figures to stand on at the end of the game. Now you will have to choose which bricks you collect in order to build your tower at the end of the game, so you might want to build the tower first and collect the pieces as you play. You will need a number of Lego blocks for building towers depending on how many players there are in the game. Remember your tower has to support all 4 of your figures and not fall over.

        -6 players: 20 blocks per player

-5 players: 16 blocks per player

-4 players: 12 blocks per player

-3 players: 8 blocks per player

-2 players: 4 blocks per player

    To add more speed to the game, you can have spaces for "roll again" marks, where if your figure lands on this, you can roll the dice again for an additional move, but without your character's ability move bonus.

 This brings us to the 'Special Abilities' part for the Lego minifigures.  Because there are so many different characters and types of minifigures that LEGO has produced over the years, with so many thousands of sets, that you can have a massive city of Lego and have hundreds of individual residences.  So taking that into account, I came up with a way to give special abilities to each of those thousands of figure types. These are incorporated into the game in both movement and interacting with the other players in the game. This can be both an advantage and disadvantage to each player as the game progresses. Primarily this gives an advantage to a player who doesn’t roll well with the dice as well as to a player who does roll well with the dice.
  For the minifigure abilities, I divided up the figures into 5 choices for a player to choose from :

1. City/Animal/Food,
2. Heroes,
3. Ghost/Monster,
4. Villains,
5. Princess/Friends/Artist

Your figure is placed into one of these categories. You will have to reinforce why your figure has this status based on which minifigure it is. Knowledge of your character is key. Don’t forget you only have 4 figures and you can only have 1 of the 5 categories for those four characters. You can’t have 2 Ghosts and 2 Villains. Each figure has to be a different minifigure category. (EX. 1 city, 1 hero, 1 monster, 1 friend, etc)  During your turn after you roll your dice, you take the combined number you rolled (2-12), then add on what your character's move bonus is to the dice roll number.  The Special Ability move numbers are: 

• City/Animals/Food: move 2

• Heroes: move 3

• Ghost/monster: move 4

• Villains: move 5

• Princess/Friends/Artist: move 6

In Addition, when you interact with another player's character, there is also a player ability called a “bonk”. This works as a hindrance to your opponent's move. When your figure passes another on the board, the passed figure is bonked. Depending on the choice you have designated for your figure, this will tell how far the opponent's figure is pushed back spaces.  The Special Ability “Bonk” numbers are:

-Villains bonk: player fall back 2 places

-City/Animal/Food bonk: player fall back 3 places

-Hero bonk: player fall back 4 places

-Princess/Friends/Artist bonk: player fall back 5 places

-Ghost/Monster bonk: player fall back 6 places

In addition, if you happen to be using a character that has a rival that one of your opponents is using, this comes into play as an additional bonus. For example; you have the Hercules minifigure and you bonked your opponent's Hades figure; Hercules adds 2 spaces to your move. Hades is bonked back 2 additional places. Contrariwise, if Hades bonked Hercules; Hades then adds 2 spaces to their move. Hercules is bonked back 2 additional places.
  These abilities allow for an even playing field and for players to use a variety of different and opposing minifigures to add fun and difficulty to the game.  Because you have to build your 4 figure team to account for your opponent's team, there are hundreds of varying teams you can build, depending on the minifigures you have in your collection. The more players you have, the more fun you will enjoy as you have to create your team of Lego Minifigures, build the tower and Win the Game.  

If you want to play this game, please print out the board and give it a try. I will be creating a LEGO ideas page for the game if it becomes popular.

My LEGO Haunted Hayride

I’ve become a renewed fan of LEGO blocks, thanks to my son’s birth. I never had an extensive childhood experience with LEGO, so the birth of my son opened a great opportunity. Recently, because of the COVID-19 Pandemic, I have been put on furlough from my job. So I have had a lot more free time at home.  Every year for Halloween, I like to decorate the front of my house with an elaborate display for the trick-or-treaters.  It started when I was younger and living with my parents.  I began making it more and more elaborate and even going as far as adding animatronics and continued decorating my parents house even after I moved into my condo. When I became married and we moved into our new house, I began looking for themes/ideas for the front of our home for the annual holidays. I also learned of the town’s Decorating Contest.  So I really focused on either building or acquiring decorations for a specific theme. It has been a hobby of mine that has developed for several years.

 

  When the COVID-19 Pandemic hit and the extra time on my hands from the lockdown, I thought about doing something smaller and more personal.  I didn't want to invest in the small porcelain towns because I was worried about storage and the possibility of breaking so I looked in a different direction. 

That’s when I found out about Lego blocks systems has an entire line of Spooky sets(Hidden Side, Monster Fighters, etc).  I did more searching and found out that Lego has been producing special release sets for the Halloween Holiday. I started searching for ideas for what I could do with just my son’s Lego sets.  Originally, I didn’t want to build something too elaborate since my son did still play with his sets.  One of the sets we had for him happened to have some online instructions for a ghost. So I started small and using the extra bricks that he wasn’t using I built my first ghost.  

When I was done, I did an online search for instructions on how to build a Jack-O-Lantern, to go with the ghost. I found lots of instructions, but most of them required bricks that we didn’t have. So I had to come up with something that worked with what I had.  After about a week of playing around with different bricks, I finally came upon a way to build the Jack-O-Lantern. 

I then took it another step further and did an online search for a 2nd ghost and tombstone instructions.  The more I worked on it, the more thoughts and ideas I started having. The tombstones were quite simple to do and we had the extra bricks, but because I had created the one ghost, there was a limit on what was available for the second.  Like the Jack-O-Lantern, I had to improvise and think of what ghosts could look like.   I came up with a design that was close to what I was thinking and I was able to build 3 tombstones. 

So I had a small display that looked decent for my first attempt. But when I was done, I had this feeling that I could do more.  Now my Birthday just happens to fall in October and I had been thinking about what small things I could get for myself because my family always sends me a little something for me to get gifts, which I always appreciated.  So I decided to invest in two Lego sets and a few Lego minifigures.  

Once I started building, the ideas of what I could do just kept coming to me.  It was like I was painting a picture in my head; only it was a version of a real-life Haunted Hayride, which is a seasonal attraction active in the Autumn season. I realized I was designing a new Haunt like I did when I thought about how I decorated my house, only on a smaller scale. The creative thoughts that came to me on what to do with my house, were now giving me ideas for this miniature Halloween Haunt. So I decided, "What the heck!" I invested in one more set and then went directly to LEGO’s website and started ordering bricks.

  This proved challenging because there was an issue with the website's brick picking section. I ended up having to call customer service and had to special order the bricks and pieces I was looking for. Now I’m still waiting for the bricks to arrive, but already what I have is really impressive. I feel like this is not only something cool that I created, but that it is something that could actually be built in real-life, with the proper budget. The great thing was because my wife and I had invested in so many brick sets for my son, there were plenty of extra bricks for me to use.  So I took the sets I purchased and expanded them to work together with my son’s bricks. 

   I know some would say it’s silly for a grown man to be playing with what is essentially a children's toy, but as we have seen in popular culture; A Lego Movie 1&2, Fox’s LEGO Masters, there are many Adult professionals who have enjoyed using the LEGO brick systems to create something unique and special build displays, that allow them to share a world apart from our own.  This was mine. I really enjoyed creating this story. With the shipment of the additional bricks having arrived and with some special minifigures from Amazon, I have had some great creative ideas.  I plan to have 3-4 sections to this build and it will be a Fun Park category design.  Right now with the Hayride, I have the first attraction in the park.  The next will be to add a Fair part of the park, with concession stands, rides, and games for guests.  The next section will have more, but I'm still not sure if I want a haunted house. I haven’t decided if it will be a One-story Ranch or a Two-Story home. The last section is a big "IF". The idea is for the hayride to move in a complete circle around the park. So it will travel through each section before arriving back. I'm definitely going to be tearing it down and rebuilding it, so it's up to the standard as some of the builds I have seen on TV and online. It's going to be a lot bigger than I had originally thought.  I hope to keep working on this build for years and adding on to it as the year's pass. It's going to be something that gets pushed aside when Covid-19 ends, but it will still be there when I have time available. Besides, there's always next Halloween for new ideas.

Ticket Booth(Missing Ticket sign)

Concession Stand

Face Painting table

Fairground Game

LEGO Halloween Frank(modified)

UPDATED!!!!! 1/5/2021

I have steadily continued working on this build. I have created a more visually attractive display and have added additional details.  I can finally say the first section of the Halloween Haunt is done.  The next section will be the "Fair" part of the Halloween Haunted Hayride.  This section will include vendors and carnival games and rides.  I have acquired and built several game booths, food booths and I have a carnival ride(which I hope to add another soon). 

 

The other two sections are still in the works.  The third section I have in mind to either have a Haunted House or Barn. Possibly could change to a Corn Maze. The fourth section I have plans to make into a "Parking Lot" which will have not only patron cars and ticket booths, but also themed cars (possibly from other "Spooky" themed sets) but this is still in the planning stages.  

UPDATE - 01/2021

I've started on the second section, which is the Fairgrounds part of the Haunted Hayride. 

There is a lot more to do, and the extra bits and parts have been ordered.  I'm just happy that it's all coming together. 

Update 9/5/2021

I have expanded to the third and fourth sections of the carnival sections.  Originally I had planned to have in one of these sections, a haunted house of sorts and an additional attraction.  When I first started to check for space, I realized that a house would use up too much of the display I wanted for the haunt.  So instead I added sets to use in these sections.

  

With these additional sets, I was able to acquire 3 additional ride attractions that maintained the theme and scope of what I wanted to create. With the roller coaster part of the Hidden Side Fairgrounds set, I have not only allowed for more space to add materials but also now have a challenge for creating a complete roller coaster, which was not part of the original set. Through online communities, I was able to track down the parts that I will eventually purchase and use to create a functioning ride to add to the whimsy of the park.

As to the center 'kiddy' part of all 4 sections, I have added additional "inflatable" characters as well as added a scene inspired by the classic Shakespear scene from 'Macbeth'. The idea was to try to include the many different Brick Head characters and to have them as 'Inflated' attractions so they are both spooky and fun for kids, while for the teenagers and adults, the other parts of the park are for them. So it really has a "Whole Family" kind of fun.

As for the rest of the haunt, I have redesigned a few of the carnival games and vendors and added in more patrons so as to have the feel of guests in the park.  In addition, I added dirt trail marks on the tractor path to show how the tractor will move through the park. 

The haunted hayride section has been infused with more ghosts and characters to allow for a more haunting experience.  I was able to track down several Halloween-themed expansions that have made for a nice combination of old and new minifigure styles.

I'm currently waiting for my birthday when I will hopefully be able to purchase the last of the bricks and pieces I need to finish this initial display.

Update: 11/11/2021

I now have all the sections put together.  I have just a few additional pieces to add on to make it look the way I want it. I removed the green pieces on the ground to make the ground look uniform. I'm using a lot of tan color for the main ground of the park, but for the tractor paths, I'm using more brown tiles with interspersing of smooth and textured tiles. 
 What I really like is how this is coming together. It has really forced me to stop and think about how it all needs to fit together.  I keep running into issues and have to reanalyze how they should look and fit together. I've always like it when a problem comes up. It allows me to make changes and see if there is room for improvement, which it has.  

I've already made changes to the build since I took these pictures and it excites me to know that even though I'm getting closer to the end, I can start thinking of ways to make it look better and add little details that tell a bigger story. I may never fully finish this build, but then as my building skills improve, it will keep getting better the more I work on it.
I'll update again when I have the gray surface area covered and start putting the finishing touches on the build.

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UPDATE: 11/25/2021

IT'S ALMOST DONE!!!

It to me a long time to get there but I finally got the main attractions finished.  All the parts are in the right places and now it's just down to the final adjustments.  I have all the main rides in position. I just have to put the little touches in and add a few cosmetic needs.  I know I need more brown bricks to finish off the dirt path of the tractor and trailer, but I'm just thrilled to have all the main positions finished. It's crazy that I started this whole thing back in September of 2020 and now here it is a year later and I have this huge build. There's plenty still to do but now I can really start planning the big improvements. 

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UPDATE: 10/2022

I've made some changes and improvements to the build! I realized the roller coaster was a big project and had to go back 3 times to make sure that it could work and stay functional. I came back to the set several times and the parts had come loose, so I had to make it longer and more secure. I also decided to include ghost mini figures along the ride so to scare the passenger on the ride. I have to play a bit with it but it's looking really good.  Also because I had to change the roller-coaster, I had the chance to reorganize the build and move some characters and scenes around to add details I missed before.  

  In addition, when we went to C2E2 this past summer, I found some great minifigures to add to the scene. The big bonus was my in-laws and relatives on my wife's side, gave us a huge bin of completed Lego sets which had most of the minifigures and parts.  So I now have a huge addition of characters and bricks I can use to finish most of the parts I couldn't complete before.  I just received the brown bricks to finish the tractor-trailer path and I reconstructed the trailer so it looks more like an actual hay wagon that my Father-in-Law has on his farm. I am almost done with the whole thing. I will post pictures when I put in the build complete for Halloween.  

10/31/2022

IT IS FINISHED!!!!!

I put the finishing touches on the build just before Halloween and did the final adjustments on Halloween. It is finally complete!!!

It was a huge undertaking just to take these photos as the table isn't big enough to just rotate the whole build around.  
This has been a labor of love and creative thinking since September of 2020, that is 2 years of; building, tearing down, re-building, planning, following the plan, watching the plan go off the rails, abandoning the plan, starting a new plan, buying the necessary pieces, searching for the parts and bits that I needed and finding the minifigures to compliment the themes.  My wife was under the impression that this was NEVER going to be finished, but thanks to the final pieces being available to be purchased I was able to finish the project.
 I will admit that there was a LOT more I wanted to do with this project, but it just wasn't feasible to fit everything I wanted into the space. The roller coaster was the real labor as each time I worked on it, something didn't work right.  Plus some of the designs just didn't make sense or it would require me to sacrifice a part of the scene I loved in order for it to fit.  I finally gave in to the idea that this coaster would have to be a design that would have to wait for automation before it really comes together. Many of the parts for this will have to be animated before I am really satisfied with the look and feel of it. 

I do have to say I am VERY proud of this build. It's my first really big build and I am really happy with how it turned out! Granted I don't have the skill and talent of other Lego Builders that have been doing this for years, but I am happy with how it looks and turned out.

  The real treat has been seeing my son's face and his reaction to the build as I have been working on it. 

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The Haunted Hayride Haunt Story:

    In a small farming community, a farmer purchases a new hay farm.  One day as he is gathering the crop, he discovers that an old graveyard was hidden in the multi-acre farmland.  After making the proper authorities aware of the situation and the graves and site exhumed, the resulting news attention created by the discovery, made the farmer decide he wanted to attract the same attention again. Working off the media that was started from the event, the farmer creates a Hayride through his hayfield for the general public to enjoy at a reasonable fee. He decorates a small section with scary or Halloween-themed displays. Over the years the farmer has expanded the event and hired actors and more decorations to which, in addition to what the farmer makes on his hay production, allows for the event to be self-sustained, making the Haunted Hayride a great financial investment. The farmer started out by replicating the graveyard. First with some normal tombstones and then more elaborate tomb displays. Then the farmer added the ghosts and monsters.  As time went by, the farmer wanted to make the hayride enjoyable for all ages, so he made it both scary and fun.

Children of all ages and adults come to enjoy the festivities. The farmer holds the Haunted Hayride every Halloween Holiday Season.

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The next challenge for this WHOLE display is to Animate it.  

What I mean by that is I want to animate the Tractor and trailer to ride around the center by themselves, and animate the ghosts and trees so they look like they are moving on their own. Also to animate the rides and some of the vendors and patrons so they seem alive.  This is going to be a challenge because, in order for the animation parts to stay out of sight, I will have to raise this whole display up so I can add the moving parts underneath.  I have no experience with that kind of build so that will be a skill set I will have to learn.

Please Comment and tell me what you think.

Thank you for your interest.