House of TADS

Project name: House of TADS
Project duration: 1 week
Agenda: To build a game that preserves ones family history. Suitable for: 10 & Above age category

Content:
Research
How to play?
Prototype
User testing

Overview:
House of TADS is a card game tightly based on my paternal family history. It is about the 4 generations in the family and who they were/are in a nutshell. TADS allows people playing it understand family history and tiny details from each of the TAD’s lives. The game has five face cards which represent the five people it revolves around. Players have to collect cards of their secretly choosen TAD by sequencial pull and pass method. The first one to collect, wins.

Motivation behind doing this project:
During a family gathering, my parents kept telling me the relation I share with any random relative I met. While I don’t remember any that anymore, it got me thinking. What did my ancestors do? Who were they? How did they go about life. How did the family grow this wide? Forget everything, what were their names? Coming from a nuclear family and barely having met my grandparents, I never really got a chance to know about their lives. I called my grandmother and one of the eldest aunts in the family out of curiosity. With every question answered, my mind was over-flowing with the amount of facinating stories they were pouring. It only took 18 years of my life to realize how precious this information was. With everybody growing apart, I knew I had to preserve this. I knew I couldn’t lose it. Thus came along, House of TADS.

Research

Data collected over phone calls with my Aunt & Late Grandmother.

How to play?

There is a Trader, Teacher, Artist, Architect and Designer.
Consider Trader:
There will be 9 quality cards and 1 face card. In beginning of the game the no. of quality cards to be collected will be decided(Range: 5 – 9 cards). Say it is decided to be 7. The game starts with the players analysing their cards and deciding which member of the family they want to behove (mandatory to be kept secret). Say in a player’s analysis they find out that they have 4 Trader quality cards and 6 other random cards. Basically to win they need 3 more trader cards. All the players hold their 10 cards and the player to the left of the player who distributed the deck, starts the game. They will pull a random card from the player to their left and the loop continues sequencially. If the card that the first player pulls is of their use they gets to keep it. Securing that card their other 10 cards are in the market for the next guy to pull from. In this way the game continues until someone successfully collects 7 quality cards.

Things to remember:

• You cannot win if you don’t have a face card.
• So collecting 9 quality cards is also worthless if you don’t have the face card of the trader (in this case)
• Collection of 7 cards only is allowed or more than 7 totally depends on the players playing game as far as it is decided in the beginning of the game.
• If it is not decided it will be 7 cards to be collected and collection of any more that those cards will not allow you to win.
• In your hand still remain 10 cards even after you win. 7 are your quality cards with a face card and 3 are other random cards which possibly were in your hand so you block someone else from winning.(Just saying!)

Prototype

QUALITY CARDS
EKNATHAPPA - GREATGRANDFATHER - TRADER

VASANT - GRANDFATHER - TEACHER

REKHA - AUNT - ARTIST

GIREESH - FATHER - ARCHITECT

SRUSHTI - ME - DESIGNER

FACE CARDS

If the players want to continue after first win:
Now say someone gathered trader cards fulfilling all the requirements will keep his cards down and will says TADS! Other 4 get chance to guess which member cards have he collected. Whoever guesses it right first wins a golden chance. In this golden chance the player gets first chance to ask for a card from the remaining random cards (i.e 3 cards in this case) from the winner and if the asked card(s) is there, it is given off. Others get a chance after him (if any cards are left). If the golden chance winner gets 2 cards of his wish he will keep his 2 unwanted cards down. Whoever wants them will pick it. If the guess is wrong everybody else gets to ask him for 1 card each and if he has those cards he has to give them and accept any card that they give back in return. In that case the 3 cards of the winner are opened in the market and whoever wants them (eccept the one that lost) picks those cards. The game continues until just one player is left.

• FOR MULTI PLAYER:
  There will be another set of 20 random cards. Say 3 farmer cards,4 astronaut cards,2 chef cards, etc. These 20 cards will be mixed with the other 50 cards. And these 70 cards will be equally divided between the players. Rest of the game remains same.
• FOR PLAYERS LESS THAN 5:
  If the no. of players is 4, one set of member cards will be taken out of the deck and 40 cards will be distributed.
• The game can end at this intermediate position where everyone else has to connect their 10 card details and tell everyone a funny story out of the random cards that are in their hands.

User Testing