4. Setbacks

2021.06.26

Our ideas for the inital Frankenstein-meets-Noah's-Ark game came to a premature end when we did our literature review and found 'Monster Factory,' a 2012 release (ranked 5,961 on Boardgamegeek) that played to moderate fanfare, that also cited Carcassonne as an ancestor model. Although we were initially disappointed to find that our "revolutionary idea" had already been thought of nearly a decade ago (re: your ideas are worthless), taking this small step into making board games and not merely consuming them had changed the way I viewed this board game. It was almost as if, the game designer had strugged with the same issues that we had and had been able to find elegant solutions to the problems that we were facing:

1) artistic direction - would it make sense for frankensteined random animals? --> using a cohesive alien monster that is up to the whimsy of its creator's imagination

2) how do you deal with end pieces and resolving animals in a favorable way? --> introduce two types of connections (eg. purple and green) which allows for any piece to theoretically end within the piece itself

3) how can you make end pieces more aesthetic? --> each piece and end piece is unique

4) distribution of pieces? --> check the BGG site, it turns out pieces that connect in two ways are very important

5) best shape for pieces? --> we had initially started out with rectangles but Monster Factory opted for squares which allowed for creatures to be more compact and aesthetic - our game at this stage had a lot of holes on the board.

While these weren't profound insights by any means, it was interesting to see just how shifting my own perspective from consumer to producer had been beneficial in this regard. One hope for this website is that through content production, I will continue to grow and learn in ways that I would not were I merely to consume.