Expensive Land in the City Centre!

This week I have been trying to develop my modular city further. I feel that it is important to take more influence from city-builder games, in particular, they often feature social, economic and political issues that you have to overcome to help your city grow. However, I feel it is important for my toy to not have a set end as I want to keep it as a sandbox experience.

I have considered giving each area on my board a value, which would be like a land value if it was real life. How much value a building contributes to the area could determine whether it is worth the land value of that space and therefore whether it can be built or not.

Equally the land values can be distributed in bands or zones so that it is more accurate to an actual city.

Having looked at these ideas I thought it would be good to create a couple of very simple and quick models to demonstrate my concept. They helped me to visualise what my toy could end up looking like, even if the models were created out of completely different materials.

My cardboard model that I have made is very bare-bones but demonstrates that I want to create pieces that stack. I also made one of the blocks unique with a pyramid on top to emphasise that I will try to make as many unique designs as possible so that the city looks very interesting.

My foam board model does a better job of showing how the toy would function as it features a joint, similar to that of a dowel joint or mortise and tenon. It also features a unique brick and a marked out grid for where the buildings could be placed.

As I have been working more on this project, I think I will need to create an instruction leaflet or manual to help children to understand the rules and mechanics of the game. I want to get across the structure and how it is played in as simple manner as possible.

- Samuel Sant

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