Chicago: The Game
Chicago: The Game is a passion project gamification of touring a city that I have been working on for the past year. One of the first classes I took in undergrad was called Discover Chicago, where students would learn about the culture, public transit, and the many neighborhoods that make up Chicago. Through this course I found a love for exploring the city and meeting the people that live there.
Chicago: The Game is a fun and interactive way for those new (or not so new!) to Chicago to learn about and experience all the city has to offer while connecting with friends through a race to the finishline!
Race other team(s) using public transit from southern Chicago to the northern edge by completing challenges and earning coins in least one neighborhood in each section of the map. Coins can be used to buy power ups to help your team or curses to slow down another team. The first team to complete a challenge in each of the sections and make it to the finishline wins. Extra coins can be won by completing extra challenges in different neighborhoods.
Background& Inspiration
I got the inspiration to start creating this game after watching and being a fan of the youtube based game show Jet Lag: The Game. On this game show three youtubers, Sam, Ben, and Adam, as well as a guest compete in travel based games across the country or the world. A few of the versions they have put out so far are: Connect Four Across America, Tag Across Europe, and the version that most inspired my project, Race across New Zealand.
I have always been a fan of traveling and finding creative ways to explore a city or town and found myself wishing there was a local equivelant to the Jet Lag game show that I could play with my friends. This is when I realized I could make my own! Below is the up to date design process for my version of the Jetlagged game show from research to play testing.
Special thanks to Jet Lag: The Game and Wendover Productions for creating such an engaging and inspirational game show!
Game Objective
Game Challenges
Once I was felt I had enough challenge ideas and locations to facilitate mulitple teams competing without overlap I began to write the individual challenges and working out the rules of the game. While I wanted the challenges to be fun and engaging, I also wanted them to be educational and as nondisruptive to the residents of the city as possible. This is where I decided to include a fun fact about each neighborhood along with the challenge so players could learn more about the history and culture while actively completing the challenges.
After writing the individual challenges, I set out to decide the coin and penalty values for each challenge. These values are based upon the difficulty and time needed to sucessfully complete the challenge. More difficult challenges and neighborhoods further from public transit are worth more coins and have higher penalty periods. This creates a "higher risk, higher reward" system that incentivizes players to travel further and compete in the harder challenges.
An example of a challenge can be seen on the right.
Play Testing
I am currently in the initial game testing phase, working with volunteers to facilitate smaller versions of the game. These smaller versions give me the chance to shadow the teams as they complete challenges and play the game in real time. While shadowing teams I take notes on their game strategy, time taken, and overall feelings while playing. I have also created pre and post surveys for the volunteers to complete to gather extra information to be used to improve overall gameplay.
CHICAGO
BASED DESIGNER