~~REVEAL~~

'A giant Kaiju (monster) is trying to take over a large-scale cardboard city in The Edge Auditorium. Come and defend Brisbane against the Kaiju in this collaborative board game experience.'

The aim of Cardboard Kaiju is to provide an easy, designed program on ramp for an apocalypse themed event.

This kit has:

- the physical cardboard designs (Buildings and creating a kaiju process)

- the game design

- soundscape files

- Ideas to incorporate video

You will need to spend some time prior to starting looking at these and seeing which you will use. This will depend on how large your space is.

Note that for The Edge auditorium there were 30 buildings and one Kaiju.

Timelines:

Cardboard Kaiju can be delivered over 3 weeks or longer.

Acknowledgements:

The initial concept was developed by Daniel Flood (he had inspiration from UGO)

The game design was developed by: Daniel Flood, Phil Gullberg & Nejdet Yilmaz

Engaging community into this process

Each element of this game can be a way to engage with a community group. The following is who and how groups were engaged:

1. Men's Shed men built the cardboard buildings (after they were cut on the CNC)

2. Albert Park Flexi School young people worked on the sound design (as well as their recording skills)

3. Albert Park Flexi School young people designed the Kaiju

4. Albert Park Flexi School play-tested the game design

5. The wider community built the Kaiju over a week

Game design

Here is how the game works.

Cardboard Kaiju Rules

cardboardkaijucards.mp4

For further development into the future there was discussion of an alternative game system, based off of existing tactical roleplaying games that are published under various alternative licences (CC and FOS) such as the Apocalypse World, Fate and D&D/Pathfinder. This is still a possibility that will be undertaken when there is time or an interested party wants to run with the ball. It might even be a workshops program that The Edge delivers in the near future involving people wanting to explore alternative game design beyond card-based mechanics into roleplaying and board gaming considerations.

Physical design

Logo Font

kaiju_monster_g_1_.zip

cardboard_kaiju_logo.pdf

Buildings

Here are the templates to use to cut out a cardboard world out of cardboard (you will need a bucket load of hot glue) You can either use a CNC or simply use box cutters and hot glue.

1-1_production.dxf

1-2_production.dxf

2-1_production.dxf

2-2_production.dxf

3-1_production.dxf

3-2_production.dxf

3-3_production.dxf

4-1_production.dxf

4-2_production.dxf

5-1_production.dxf

5-2_production.dxf

5-3_production.dxf

6-1_production.dxf

6-2_production.dxf

Creating a Kaiju

- Flexi School young people came into The Edge for a design thinking session and came up with this design for a Kaiju.

This is the process that was taken:

Cardboard Kaiju Session 1

The next step was to make the Kaiju.

A number of Edge staff (lead by Mick Byrne with input by Emma Che Raethke) brainstormed how to make this Kaiju design. The Edge then put out a call out through Facebook and community for people to come and join in the making of the Kaiju. The making of the Kaiju took a week, four liters of hot glue and the cardboard off-cuts from making the buildings.

It was fun to just jump in without too much of a formal plan, and get a feel for the material, but I'd recommend making a scale model and then starting out with an internal frame of cross section “ribs and spine”. Once community members can see the shape or form you are creating they can help by getting involved. Once people could see what we were doing they began suggesting improvements or ways to embellish - this is how we ended up with the LED eyes and tongue.

Sound design

This is what was given as a guideline to the young people to make soundscapes.

- Monster attacking

- Buildings crashing

- People running & screaming

- Ambient city (helicopters, honks, cars, crowds)

The following sound was developed with Albert Park Flexi School led by Sunny Verma:

city_s_-_night.mp3

crowd_screaming.wav

monster_footfalls.wav

ola_soundscape_-_how_to.doc

Video design

The initial ideas from Daniel Flood: Full motion video for narrative elements and instructional material for games. There is a stop motion/cut out aesthetic.

- On the day of the prototype event that was run we collected ideas around video.

Here are the ideas that came up:

- fire and smoke

- time lapse of sun rising and setting over the landscape

- Kaiju approaching city limits

- promo videos for new casino development, overlaid with flames, people running

- fake news reports from the scene

- close up of the Kaiju's wrath

- make a Youtube channel

- Youtube videos of cardboard cities being destroyed

- motion trigger smoke and hazard and remote controlled Kaiju

Reflection & Learnings

Cardboard Kaiju

The games were played during a 4 hour timeslot, from 12pm-4pm. We had time run about 5-6 games, with at least 4 players in each game and a maximum of 8. The games lasted from 30-45 minutes, much depending on the gaming experience/understanding of the participants, age as well as the group size. There was a large variety of participants, ages ranging approximately from 5-50 year old. Participants enjoyed the experience and novelty of a giant monster and playing field. The participants allowed themselves to get immersed in defending the city and the Kaiju storyline. We didn’t run into any game-breaking bugs and very few issues were pointed out during the game or afterwards.

The duration of each game was discussed beforehand and we asked the question if 30 minutes was too long. When developing the game we considered making it shorter but our belief was that less than 30 minutes wasn’t enough to get engaged with the game. After reflecting over the duration, 20 minutes would be the absolute minimum. This time could possibly be achieved if participants were to come back and play again, already knowing the rules of the game.

We also discussed what to do with individuals or groups waiting to play as the waiting times could be pretty long. Some people decided to wait, others went away and came back later, some left. I believe that a signup list would be worth it with more or less rough timeslots. It would also be something that could be spread thinner over a longer period, given that there are at least two sets of facilitators to rotate during the day. Feedback we did get was that the font on the cards needed to be larger/more easily readable, especially the descriptions on the card. Some participants, especially in the low light environment, had difficulties reading the cards.

Something that we noticed was that once a game had started it was very difficult for new people to just jump in and “catch up”. It required a significant delay in the game. We only experienced this in the first game where we had participants trickle in with 5-10 minute intervals.

It was very important to have a second person handling the buildings and Kaiju movement; there was little interest from the participants who were focused on their next move. For a longer session it would be nice to have multiple facilitators take turns every game, or every second game, to maintain energy levels as well as being able to take bathroom/food breaks.

photos

cardboardworld.mp4

kaiju.mp4