Castle Project part 3

I feel like I'm heading towards a more finalised idea with this project, I was thinking about how the play could be different and also how the castle could look different to the typical four walls and a draw bridge image. I want it to be customisable, so that it can be a castle for a fairy, a princess, an evil villain, a knights castle, a broken/defeated castle, and maybe even a castle ruin like we'd find in our modern world, but it would also be great is this castle, or parts of it atleast could be transferrable, these parts can turn into something else, can be used in different games etc..

So, this is where I'm at with it..

Taking the basis of the modular table top terrain, I've taken these basic round tower shapes, that can be stacked, but thought it would be great if they could stack not just on top of each other, but off centre too, with the idea that after roughly two or three levels, the structure would become unstable and fall over, it then becomes a hurdle to get over, a restriction that should inspire creative engagement, imagination, balance, counterbalance, creative thinking.

I remember playing with play sets and thinking, I wish I could just get there, like my character, I wish my character could just walk to that bit by there, and it would be cool to be able to get inside that building, rather than the door being painted on or whatever.. ideally these tower structure will be hollow, allowing the user to fill the insides, enter each level. And I added these movable ladders so that every level can be reached, and these ladders can go inside or outside the tower structures.

Playing around with coping and troughs for these to fit together, and also magnets, but found that magnets would restrict the play, having positive and negative, there's going to end up being a lot of things the player might not be able to do, would it be too much restriction?

So these are the design pages through this process, playing around with what the user can do with these materials at hand. I particularly enjoy this page full of different parts allowing for the imagination to build and construct all kinds of things..

And this is where I really started to think like a designer I believe, taking these ideas and making everything fit into each other, making for better play.. the poles fit into everything with holes which are the, rope ends, the wooden planks, the cogs and the holes in the buildings themselves. and everything that screws/fixes anything, can fit through the holes too. And through this process, thought, maybe the ladders and planks should be able to fit into each other too.. and so the ladders fit into the rectangle slits in the side of the 'beams', and they both fit into the arrow slits on the buildings themselves.

The buildings will be designs so that they can slot into each other, using the battlements as fixing points, this will be designed in such a way that rectangle and circular turrets can fix into each other too, making for more interesting tower shapes. The roofs will be separate playable pieces, that will fix onto any turret, either inside or over the battlements, depending on size.

The idea is that a totally customisable castle can be built, there's no instructions, and no tools, making the learning curve easier on the player. The hope is that the player should be able to play through experimentation, trying different pieces in different places, seeing what works and what doesn't.

The pieces have been designed so that they can have multiple uses.. the wheels that can be used for the draw bridge can also be used to pull a bucket of water to the top of a tower, and the same wheels can be used to fix into multiple points in the planks of wood, to make a cart, or a car, what ever else the player can imagine.

I think of Mechano at this stage, but I remember a learning curve with the tools, if you couldn't work out the tools, you had no chance of building anything. By taking inspiration from Cas Holmans' rig-ama-gig, by using wing nuts, complex shapes should be achievable, even with the smallest of hands.

So, this is the design at the moment, the next step is to make and early prototype using kitbashing to get a feel of the play, and what can be achieved. I've been collecting bits of plastic etc from old toys and sweets/lollypops, that seem to fits very well in terms of scale and are the parts needed..

Watch this space..