How are thematic and mathematical elements used in game design? That’s the question, isn’t it. Well, we’ll answer it later. For now, I’m going to talk about how I learned the answer. For this project, I worked with Naomi. We built a board game, which we called “Tectonic Smash.” In this blog post, I will include the game outline and I’ll be answering the driving question.

The game outline consists of four parts: the pieces, the evidence, the turn and some examples of probability. We’re going to start with the pieces. The game included these items:Next, I will talk about the evidence. In this case, evidence means proof of tectonic movement within the game. Some proof of tectonic movement is volcanoes, mountains, earthquakes, and sea floor spreading. It also literally had plates that you moved within the turn, so that one’s kind of obvious.

Now, I’m going to talk about the turn. The board is split up into four quadrants, with one player at each. At the start of your turn, make sure that you are holding seven cards. If you aren’t, pick up cards from the pile until you have seven. At the start of your turn, the wise thing to do is analyze the board. What types of boundaries are each plate? are they even overlapping/far apart? Is there already a hotspot token on the board? If so, make sure to use that information strategically. Now, in your turn, you will place down a card. You can start with a plate boundary card, or if there’s already a useful plate boundary that fits your requirements, you can place down an attack or defense card (ex. if there’s a divergent plate boundary already on your quadrant of the board, you can place a sea floor spreading card there to revive one heart.) If you’re placing a card to attack someone, you must place it in their quadrant of the board. Make sure to roll the die to make sure your attack is activated. Instead of placing a boundary card, you could instead place a hotspot token or an epicenter token. Once you have attacked or placed a plate boundary, and (if applicable) revived hearts, then your turn is over.

Lastly, I have some examples of probability in the game. This is showing the chances of getting a certain combination

• Pulling an earthquake card and able to attack with it: 5/90 (How did I get this? Probability of drawing an earthquake card= 5/45. Probability of rolling even numbers= 1/2. 5/45 x 1/2=5/90)
• Pulling a volcano card and not able to attack with it: 5/90 (How did I get this? Probability of drawing a volcano card = 5/45. Probability of rolling even numbers = 1/2. 5/45 x 1/2 = 5/90)
• Pulling a volcano card or protection card: 7/45 (How did I get this? Probability of drawing a protection card = 2/45. Probability of drawing a volcano card = 5/45. 2/45+5/45=7/45.)

Now it’s time to talk about the core competencies.

Evaluating: demonstrate an understanding and appreciation of evidence.

In this project I demonstrated this competency by including important things in the game, such as sea floor spreading.

Questioning and predicting: demonstrate a sustained intellectual curiosity about a scientific topic or problem of personal interest.

I demonstrated this core competency by doing extra research at home. I was interested in the topic as soon as the project started, and after school that day I read quite a few articles about it.

Understanding and solving: develop, demonstrate, and apply mathematical understanding through play, inquiry, and problem solving.

I demonstrated this core competency by showing how I was able to apply probability to the game (above.)

Now I’m going to try to answer the driving question. Remember, the question is, “How are thematic and mathematical elements used in game design? Well, as you can see above, there’s probability used within drawing cards and rolling dice. When that’s in a game, you can use mathematical elements to determine the chance of each possible outcome.

So that was my blog post. I hope you enjoyed reading about this project and my game!