February Challenge

Well, I'm 10 days late, but I guess it's better late than never. So it's time for he February game design challenge. The restrictions/guidelines for this challenge will be...

Drum roll!

The print-n-play game for February will be based on the Primary Children's song: The Wise Man and The Foolish Man. (It can be heard and lyrics can be read here)

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I'm thinking that I haven't left myself much time, so it will end up to be a simpler game, probably for younger kids.

Let me know if you have any themes or ideas that you'd like to see turned into a game.

January Print-n-Play Game

Well, I'm only 1 week late on this first month's game design challenge. It took a lot more than I thought to get a decent game together in one month (yeah, a little more than one month), but hopefully it's enjoyable. Please let me know what you think and any questions you might have. Here's a little about the game:

Moroni's Stealthy Spies (pdf here)
For 2-4 players, age 6 and up, plays in 10-15 minutes

Alma 43:23: But it came to pass, as soon as they had departed into the wilderness Moroni sent spies into the wilderness to watch their camp;

Players take on the role of Nephite spies sent by Captain Moroni to find Lamanite camps and discover their plans.


You will need to provide your own "spies." I use small wooden cubes, but you could use anything that is about the size of a penny or so. You'll need 10 per person playing.

Enjoy!!

The Book of Mormon Game

A new online Book of Mormon game called, appropriately, The Book of Mormon Game has recently been released (here). The premise is that a passage from the Book of Mormon is read out loud and it is your job to identify where the passage is located in the Book of Mormon (book and chapter), as quickly as you can.

Eric Poulin is the man behind the game. He mentions playing the game as a missionary. From the About section of the site:

While serving our missions in San Fernando, California, we'd play this game during interviews with our President, as we waited for our turn.

The first time I played this as a new missionary, I was amazed at how fast the other missionaries seemed to be able to find the right place. I love this game because it inspired me to study and learn the scriptures and become like those other missionaries. Now we present it to you. We hope it will also inspire you to become very familiar with this great book.

Eric Poulin (Ontario, Canada)
Shane Hartley (Washington, USA)

You can log in (via the site or using your Facebook account) and your times will be recorded. He has also created a Facebook app (here).

I think that this idea does have the potential of getting people to become more familiar with the scriptures, as was Eric's goal with putting it out. He's also working on a New Testament version (here), but says it needs a little more work before it is completely ready to go.

Lastly, Eric shared with me another game he's put together (it was qualified with a "needs graphic work and some further development"). It's called Don't Forget the Lyrics! and can be found here.

Talking Title of Liberty: Total War

I recently talked with Darren Andrews about his experiences modding and working on the Title of Liberty mod he did on Rome: Total War.

Here is a list of the questions I had going in (not that other things didn't come up as we talked):
1. What is modding?
2. What got you into modding games?
3. What are the legalities involved in game modding?
4. How long does it take you to mod a game?
5. How many mods have you done?
6. What made you decide to do a Book of Mormon based mod?
7. Tell us a little about the nature of the game: how it's played, what special features are included, etc.
8. How were you able to get other artists involved in the project?
9. Any idea how many times the game has been downloaded?

I also asked him a bit about board and card games that he had worked on designing earlier in his life. He worked on a large Book of Mormon war game and a more card based game with the theme based on the Sons of Mosiah and their missionary efforts. Pretty sweet!! I hope he gets up to his attic sometime and pulls out those old designs.

Enjoy!



Click here to download the .mp3 file

You can find the link to download Darren's mod on the Book of Mormon Battles website (here, hosted by James H Fullmer).

Latest Poll

Well, it looks like the votes are in and Nephi & Moroni tied for "favorite person from the Book of Mormon." The number of votes have increased 50% from the first poll to this second poll. I guess that's a good sign that more people are visiting the site here.

The new poll asks about stories from the Book of Mormon that would make good games (be it board, card, or video). As usual it will be up for two weeks. If you would like to vote for a story that is not listed in the options, then please leave a comment here and let me know. I'll update the options list accordingly.

Treasure Hunt

Recently I was looking for some sort of treasure hunt (based on the Book of Mormon or scripture) that I could use with my kids during family home evening. I came across this (link) idea from About.com. It looked promising from a quick glance. But after reading through it a little more carefully, I found that it didn't make a whole lot of sense. I understood how to set it all up, printing out clues and gluing things together, getting the appropriate pictures, hiding things, etc. The problem came with the clue cards. There are the "right" clues and then there are "dummy" or "incorrect" clues. Well, you glue the big X on the back of the incorrect clues. Isn't that a dead give-away to kids? I mean, all they will have to do is look at the back of the two clues they are given? Anyway, it didn't make sense to me and I had promised the kids that we would do a treasure hunt (I don't know about any of you, but I love the idea of hunting for something and using clues to find it, and my kids are no different than me; they love it as well). So I had to think of something. This is what I came up with:

I thought of a few (I think it was 5) scriptures that included things that could be found in my home. For example, I used Mosiah 3:10 where it talks about the Savior and how he would be resurrected and judge the world. We have several pictures of Jesus Christ in our home. So I cut some 3" x 5" cards in half, wrote the scripture reference on one side, and wrote a short clue on the other side. In this instance I wrote something like, "Who does this scripture refer to?" I didn't even have to say "look through the house for Jesus." The kids just automatically started looking at all the pictures of the Savior throughout the house (I had "hidden" the next clue on one of those pictures). So they went along like that until they found the last clue which directed them to the treasure we had picked out for them. All in all it only took about 10 minutes to set up and the kids really enjoyed it!

Through this activity we could help the kids become a little more familiar with scripture references, with the Book of Mormon (like where different books were found, etc.), with numbers and sequences (some of our kids are younger so they are still learning how to look up verse 20 that it comes later on in the chapter than verse 8), and we could help them with their reading aloud as everyone needed to hear the clue so that they could go searching for the next one. It's great how even little things like this really offer quite a range of teaching and learning opportunities!!