Second Week

We assigned jobs to everyone in the group, Dan and Martin drew the art work for the equipment cards and tiles, Terry made the board itself, David worked on game play mechanics while Georgia, Amy and me worked with others when they needed help.

We wanted to have a working prototype by the end of the week, we didn't manage it exactly and for the presentation we thought we didn't have an awful lot to present, I wish I had said more than just one thing. We also got to play some of the games the other groups had made. The game I played involved singing out a well known song that was written on a coloured card. I found the game very enjoyable.

A history of Board games

Here is a quick history on two of the oldest known board games:

The oldest board game discovered to far is (Not Sennet) 'The Royal Game of Ur'. Which was discovered in 1926 by Sir Leonard Woolley. The game was found in Royal tombs in Iraq and dates back to later than 2500 B.C.E. Among the wonders found within the tombs were four boards of the same basic design representing one game that was played by many classes of people in that society -- ranging from simple to richly worked pieces. It's not known whether UR was the first board game ever played but it's ancient enough that everything before it is pretty much guess-work.

Sennet dates back to 3100 B.C.E and as many people already now, is a game played by the ancient Egyptians. Sennet boards were discovered in the tombs of workers and Pharoahs alike. In this game of 30 squares set in three rows of 10, both player's pieces enter the board at one end of a row, proceed to the end, turn and go back down the middle at the end of which they turn again, drop to the final row and go back -- the object being to bear off all your pieces before your opponent does. Special spots on the board represent death and being turned away from the afterlife -- and rebirth to try again. The heiroglyph representing a Senet game is found honoring a king.

First week

Our group first played a couple of board games to get a few ideas of what worked well. Our group split itself into to two groups, consisting of David, Dan, Amy and Jack in one group and Terry, Georgia, Martin and myself in another. My group played Carcassonne While the other played Scotland Yard. Using this and further research that we did, which involved researching the history and marketing of popular board games we came up with two separate ideas. One was a tile based game, like zombies and Carcassonne, set either in space or underwater. The other was a game which was mostly Terry's idea, involved reaching a  goal (an oil rig) before the other players to save your country.