Laserblock
Jessica Bjermer has specialized in an interesting field within Interaction Desgin: toy design through laser-reflections with mirrors. Her last two projects have been dealing precisely with this subject and her results are just amazing.
Her first prototype (developed together with Jörgen Harre) was in essence some kind of bull’s-eye but with laser beams. Her final project is a two-player battle game where players compete to get to the red-colored target in the amount of reflections determined by a dice. The time the laser beam is running is controlled by an Arduino Diecimila. There are two types of pieces: the white ones have the ability of reflecting in 120 degrees angles, the black ones just 60 degrees.
You can download the poster explaining this game here (sorry only in Swedish, yet). All the materials shown are copyright by Jessica Bjermer, except for the second game shown in the next picture, where she shares authorship with Jörgen Harre.
Jessica’s stand at K3’s End Of Year show 2008, courtesy of the author
August 14th, 2008 at 19:00:20
While waiting for a large network batch copy of files, I hacked up a quick ten minute partial translation of the poster. I’m not a native speaker of Swedish, and my file copy is done, so most of the actual rules are missing. If anyone wants further me to translate the rest, ping me.
LaserBlock, a board game
LaserBlock is a board game for two players with a laser as the principal component.
LaserBlock has developed with help of participating(?) design in the form of playtesting and analysis of existing games different play quality.
LaserBlock was developed from an earlier game prototype, Lazerinth. Lazerinth was a board game with a laser as the principal component, a game that searched for the quality that is found for to give the play the the play fun it should have to hold the players interest.
LaserBlock evolved together with the users during the entire game development process. In playtesting, participated different users their qualitative research methods through observation and qualitative interviews used to take from information around the game and players play experience. LaserBlock developed moreover through research and theories around play and analysis of related games and their quality.
LaserBlock sets out to challenge your opponent to, with a laser beam, meet the goal that’s placed out on the play area. Each goal, a hexagonal block, has six sides where one side is the goal. It concerns taking advantage of the different mirror pieces to direct the laser in the correct direction before the power is interrupted and the laser cuts off.
Components:
Twenty red goal blocks with white goal sides.
Six black mirror pieces 60 degree angle.
Six black mirror pieces 120 degree angle.
1 black die.
Rules of Play:
Each player has ten red goal blocks to begin with. The black and white mirror piece is the piece that boath players are free to use when they shall meet the goal.
Player A begins by rolling the dice. Player B places then one goal i an optional point hole on the playing board that has the same number as the dice roll shows.