‘La Oca’ Board Game Tiles Redesign

October 2018

Traditional Game redesign to increase clarity.

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The game of ‘Oca’ is an often played game in my home of Cataluña. The game is a multiplayer dice game that consists of getting to the center of the board faster than your opponents. Along the way the players encounter special spaces which will either hinder or help their progress. For example ‘La Possada’: a space that forces the player to stay in it until another player passes through that tile. The name of the game is derived from the geese (the ‘ocas’) that are present in many if not all of the many reskins of La Oca. Landing on a geese allows the player to jump forward to the next tile that has a drawing of a geese in it, having the players chime in by singing “De Oca a Oca, y tiro porque me toca” (From Geese to Geese, and I roll again because it is my turn). La Oca has countless reskins, going from themes of Catalan independence to Spongebob Squarepants. However none of these reskins seem to take the most advantage of the layout of the board in a creative way. This project involved visual design and did not allow for the changing of major rules.

PITCH

The colorless tiles are re-drawn images from an existing Oca game, while the sepia and red tiles are the ones I have created for the redesign. Please refer to this image when reading the content below

♠ CONSOLIDATING THE RULES AND MAKING THEM EASIER TO UNDERSTAND

*Done by: having the core rules appear on the board itself, on the tile the move correspond to. This is specially important since a large portion of the audience for this game is young children. Two examples of this are on the image above:

● The ‘special spaces’ like ‘La Possada’ would have an explanation below them marking them apart from the rest of the tiles and drawing the eyes of the players. This makes them easier to distinguish amongst all of the fanfare of beautiful, lavishly decorated tiles.

● The ‘Oca’ tiles would be distinguished from the other tiles as well as special spaces by having their ‘instructions’ be incorporated into the storybook-like tile. Instead of instructions, these would have a speech bubble prompting to say the chant of the game, which as the instructions built into it.

♠ CAPITALIZING ON THE THEMATIC PROMISE OF A GAME THAT IS EASILY AND OFTEN RESKINNED TO MIMIC THAT OF A STORYBOOK

*Done by: Having a theme that worked with the linear layout of the game, instead of having a theme that all the tiles adhere to in different ways. The example I used focuses on using the Oca board to tell a story, for example that of The Princess and the Frog, from beginning of the board to end.

● This would make more sense as well as make the players feel more connected to their actions. Now if they are unable to progress in the game it is because of the evil witch or because they have been poisoned. This makes players want to get out of their situation with more vigor. At the end of the game, each player will also now have a personal path or ‘story’.

● Having this story book set up to the tiles also allows for more creativity and connection among said tiles since they no longer each have to depict a completely different aspect of the theme; all of the tiles together are the theme. This allows for some scenes exemplified by the drawings on the right of the graphic (the tiles with the princess and below, the crocodile). Each tile has one distinguishable focus, (the frog tile is tile 13, and the crocodile tile is tile 14) but they are connected and interacting with each other, creating a more dynamic board.

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