Adult Board Game Design & Reviews

In my previous post I introduced an adult board game design challenge based on a vampire theme. The working title is called Suck! It’s intended to be a foreplay game flavoured with tongue in cheek erotic horror. In this post, we’ll take a look at some design ideas leading up to a prototype board layout.

Board Game Design Constraints

As indicated in the previous post, Suck! is intended to work with EveryGame for the iPad. This introduces a few design constraints. There are also a few game elements from the concept outlined previously that should be worked in if possible. Although not “must haves”, they are factors to consider when developing the overall layout of the base image that makes up the iPad display and user interface. Here is a brief list of some of the key design constraints and desired elements for this adult board game:

• Base image size 1024×768 pixels
• Dice mechanism integrated into the board layout
• Sex dice type mechanism with action/target words
• Two decks of cards with flavour text, foreplay ideas & game play activities
• Vampire/Hunter symbols on board locations map to one of the two card decks
• Vampire/Hunter level indicators for each player (first to the top wins)
• Location squares/circles are large enough to display simple foreplay or game instructions
• Simple, clean design with minimal fancy graphics (my artistic skills still a little rusty)
• Minimal on screen instruction or label text
• Red and black primary colour scheme
• Designed for a couple (two players) in a sexual relationship

Note that there are still some more advanced features of the EveryGame system that I have not yet explored. In particular, I believe it has the ability to use larger or multiple board images and tabbed displays to show more game elements. But for this iteration of Suck!, we’ll stick with a single screen image. As you can imagine, this key design constraint impacts the board design and layout significantly.

Design Ideas

Take a look at the Oral Sex adult board game. With a few fangs and some alternate activities, it would be fairly easy to transform this board game into a vampire themed sex game. My original thought for Suck! Was to create a board design in the shape of a pair of lips with fangs or even just the fangs by themselves. After sketching a few trial designs, the graphics just did not seem appealing. With the other design elements I was thinking of including, the layout became a little cluttered.

A cross, coffin, heart or bat shape could also be used. With a bit more thought and stylistic flair, each of these shapes could be made to work but for me, based on my quick sketches, they were not looking the greatest.

A dungeon or castle layout in the form or different rooms or a maze was another possibility. Or maybe a country layout with various paths leading between a castle, church, graveyard, village and other points of interest. Although these ideas have potential, for this particular iteration of the game design I was thinking something a little less elaborate.

Referring back to my Strip Tease game, I pondered reworking it into a vampire theme. Instead of heading toward a central bed, both players would be striving to become the first vampire safe and sound in their coffin or tomb. A third “player” representing the victim/hunter could be added to interfere or help them in some way. I do like this concept since the existing game elements include a bit of strategic competition and involves chasing each other. Modifying the Strip Tease base image would be relatively simple. I could reuse most of the game mechanics and XML config files too. The cards would be modified to have flavour text more appropriate to the vampire theme. Various activity locations would be positioned along the board to add a bit more variety as well. This might include more BDSM type activities for instance.

Note that in the concept above, both players are vampires to start. Alternatively, both players could be victims trying to get safely home with a vampire hunting them down. But in this scenario, players would be sacrificing each other to the vampire rather than cooperating to save each other against a common foe. Could work but let’s not.

So, using the Sorry! style game, both players would be taking on the role of vampires. The winner would then become the vampire Lord or Queen and take “control” of the other player as their slave to service all their deviant desires. Sounds good. However, one of the game elements I wanted to include is the idea of the player transforming into either a vampire or a hunter based on their actions throughout the game. This would make it more interesting by giving players various choices and encouraging decision making throughout the game. Also, the activity cards could be made more engaging since they could tie in with this design element in various ways.

My initial thoughts for Suck! involved having two meters or level indicators per player. One meter would record the vampire level and the other would be the hunter. Essentially the good and bad in everyone that develops or is revealed based on the choices we make. The first player to get one of these levels to the top wins either as the vampire or the hunter. Which one of the two determines what they win. For instance, oral sex vs intercourse.

In this scenario, each player takes on the dual role of vampire and hunter/victim in kind of a training mode. You are not fully a vampire or a hunter until you reach a certain level. This retains a competitive element and gives a reason to chase each other around the board (otherwise it could be just a card game).

Suck! Board Game Design

After a number of paper sketches and a few layout attempts in Adobe Illustrator, I simplified the board design to a capture just the key elements in a fairly clean looking image.

As you can see from the image, it’s essentially a circular path in the form of a square. Only the two key icons representing the vampire and the hunter/prey are included. The corner locations are labelled with the intent that they be starting locations and target destinations referenced by the cards. The two level meters for each player are on the side (circles now but could be chain links or blood droplets). The location for the two decks of cards is obvious. The dice though are located where the two fiery eye like symbols are placed under the title. The two dice will be used for movement and random foreplay.

Players will start at opposite sides of the board and chase each other around the board performing foreplay activities on random turns. Landing on the lips or heart symbol allows players to perform a card based task to hopefully increase their levels or reduce the levels of their opponent. Of course there will also be a benefit for catching your opponent on the board.

Although fairly simple in design, the dice and cards will provide the basis for developing the vampire theme combined with appropriate levels or foreplay throughout. In the next post, I’ll go through a few design elements in more detail and discuss how they relate to the game play concept that evolved to fit the board layout. We’ll also look at some ideas for the cards and some initial rules.

Technorati Tags: adult board game, computer board game, foreplay games, oral sex game

It’s been a long time since my last post on adult board game design. I’ve purchased a few new adults games to review but I really want to get back into a creative development mode. Since it’s Halloween, I figured an erotic board game based on a scary horror theme would be an appropriate challenge. Like the Strip Tease game, I’m thinking it’ll be designed to work with EveryGame on the iPad so it can be downloaded, played and customized if desired. I know I’m a little late to get this game out for Halloween but scary stuff and sex are fun year round.

I’ve always been fascinated by vampires and witches both of which could be the foundation for a great Halloween sex game. I really do like the idea of a sexy witch using her magic powers for wicked pleasure. Vampires though are hypnotically erotic with an alluring power to seduce and control. The ability to lure innocents toward their own deviant and lustful desires also fits well with this erotic game concept.

When designing a board game, I like to have a title in mind to go along with the general theme. It can always be changed of course but it helps to set the initial focus. The title can also help to crystallize some of the design elements and game mechanics. It will even influence the style of erotic play you want to weaved into the game. With a vampire theme, Suck! seems to be a natural title to work with. It conjures up all sorts of sex related ideas.

Although based on a vampire theme, the activities and game elements need to be adapted to sensual sex play. Oral sex will of course be a major focus of the game but any type of foreplay involving the mouth (lips, tongue, teeth, etc.) can be integrated. Sexy vampires will happily kiss, lick and suck any part of your body given the chance. Their thirst for your sexual energy is insatiable and the more aroused you get the more powerful they become.

The role of victim or vampire hunter also needs to be integrated into the game play. To add a bit of competitive challenge and make the game more interesting, there should be some form of struggle between the vampire, it’s prey and/or the hunter. Again, the activities and game elements need to be adapted to foreplay and sex. With a little twist of the imagination, a glass dildo, vibrator or penis could easily be viewed as a “stake”. And of course other foreplay accessories could be endowed with vampire “killing” properties.

I’m sure you can see some interesting possibilities for an erotic game based on a vampire theme. We just need an objective for the game beyond great sex. Why play the game instead of just jumping into bed and having sex? Randomly mixing in various sensual foreplay activities is a given. The game needs to set a mood and emotional context . For me, I think the objective of playing and winning is to somehow determine a type of sexual activity to perform based on what happens in the game. That is, something slightly different from your normal routine and based on choices you make in the game. Considering the title Suck!, the objective could be a choice between different variations of oral sex to orgasm and intercourse.

For instance, if the vampire wins, the winning player performs oral sex on their lover to convert them into a sex slave for the night. If the vampire loses, they are cured with a “man stake” or other similarly shaped object of pleasure. Elements of bondage and even a touch of BDSM might be appropriate in either situation.

So, from a game perspective, the objective should involve either excelling as a vampire, escaping the vampire or successfully hunting them down. It would also be good to have the players identify with the various roles since they will be performing foreplay activities presumably related to the characters. For instance, kissing and licking the back of your partner’s neck to give them shivers would be a vampire like action while smearing holy lube on your lover’s nipples might be the action of a vampire hunter.

Given the objective above, here are a few possible styles of play that could be developed into the board game design:

• Players select who will be the vampire and who will be the prey or helpless victim. This style of game could even be structured so it is the guy who always plays the role of Dracula or the woman who plays a seductive vampiress or Queen of Darkness. Fixing the roles might make it easier to design the foreplay activities.
• Both players could take on the role of vampires competing for victims with the best vampire winning the game. Players would temporarily assume the role of victim while the other performs various foreplay activities on them. There could of course be traps, penalties and struggles between the vampires resulting in different types of activities being performed on the vampire.
• Both players could take on the role of prey in a vampire lair where they must successfully escape or otherwise finish off the vampire. Although not required, a third player could be introduced (alternately controlled by each player unless you have a guest) to play the role of the vampire. Optionally, players could be turned into a vampire and switch roles to change the dynamic into a more intense end game. Foreplay activities could even be based on the current roles with more explicit sex play reserved for the final stage of the game.
• Players could take on the roles of vampire, prey and hunter. The roles could alternate by turn or be dependent on the situation in the game (board location, level indicator, possessions, etc.). Or you could have different pieces corresponding to each character and moved separately based on player choice or other game event.

There are many other possible variations but this gives a sense of the options available. The board layout and design will influence which style of play will be implemented.

In the next post I’ll discuss the board game design, some appropriate game mechanics, various design elements and some ideas for different foreplay activities related to the theme.

Technorati Tags: adult board game, computer board games, foreplay games, oral sex game

My earlier post discussed some ideas for an adult board game design based on an erotic variation of Sorry!. Well, I finally finished creating a working version. In this post, I’ll discuss a few of the design decisions I opted to included in my prototype. The title Strip Tease! just seemed appropriate so that’s what stuck. Some of the rules and game mechanics were adapted to suit the title as well. (See below to download it for free and try it out)

Although I don’t consider myself a professional graphic artist, I did manage to whip up a design for the game board in Adobe Illustrator. You could have started with just an image editor to save some conversion steps. However, I think using a vector based graphics package to start is best since you have full control over the positioning the objects in pixel coordinates. Some of the fancier graphics may only be possible using an image editor but they should be doable after the primary graphics objects are designed.

The image below was exported from Illustrator into JPG then edited using Pixelmator and exported into the PNG format required by EveryGame. Note that the image looks significantly better if you export to JPG with anti aliasing on rather than exporting to TIFF first. I am sure newer versions of Illustrator can export directly to PNG format but I am still using version 10 for now.

Board Design

As you can see from the image, it is designed for only two players – reducing it from four made room for some other game elements. I opted to have players start on a Sofa presumably in separate rooms. Players need to get off the sofa and race clockwise around the board toward a single, central and common destination represented by a Bed. The Hot Zone is the “safe” area that leads to the Bed.

The board is oriented with a His (red) and Her (magenta) side – gender is denoted only by the title of the Foreplay Cards so it could easily be adapted for other sexual orientations. Pink/Blue for girl/boy seemed a bit lame and I personally like the red and magenta colours. The slider arrows only have three colours with blue representing the neutral ones that both players slide on. Recall that you don’t slide on arrows of your own colour.

For movement, instead of cards, I chose to use a dice rolling mechanism. One die indicates an action type and the other displays a number from 1-12. There are also Tease Dice for each side that are used when certain events occur. They work similar to erotic sex or foreplay dice. For my first version, I decided to use words on the dice like Kiss and Neck rather than using more complex images (actual pictures could be used). These dice were implemented following the example in the Backgammon game.

The Question marks and Heart symbols on the board are intended to add a little extra spice to the game play. When a player lands on a Heart, they tap their Foreplay Card deck to reveal an activity to perform. These cards are intended to be gender specific but could be redesigned for other purposes. They can be purely foreplay related activities or include questions or challenges with game play rewards. They can be designed such that if you land on it, your partner performs the activity for your pleasure or you perform an action for their pleasure.

The Question mark symbol is intended to be a player choice. They can make up their own foreplay activity, take a drink, select either His/Her foreplay cards or roll the Tease Dice. Other types of symbols or more of these two could be added if further play testing indicates there is not enough foreplay going on. There is a tricky balance between having too many activities vs too much game play. I do want the players to actually play a game with a bit of strategic challenge rather than just circling around a board and performing activities in a regular, semi-random sequence.

My wife wanted me to make the sofa and bed look more realistic but I figured a more abstract approach was a good first attempt. I tried to keep the board design fairly clean and aesthetically balanced while adding some colour and a few foreplay mechanisms. You’ll note that I left out instructions like “Tap to Roll Dice” to reduce clutter a bit. The game is intended for adults – they should be able to recall the basic mechanics. The labels I did include are oriented to be read by the player on the side of the board that needs to read them. The foreplay card and tease dice images are also oriented appropriately. This does require that the female version of the images be rotated 180 degrees – which I do after editing in the text. Although the tease dice are intended to be gender specific and thus separate, the action dice are the same for both players. Instead of duplicating the action dice, a single instance is used but the images are rotated 90 degrees.

Game Play Mechanics

The game is intended to play very similar to the original but with a few extras added in to make it more of a grown up game (even without the foreplay content). The action dice mechanism allows more combinations than could be done with a fixed set of cards. By using a variety of symbols, it enables more sophisticated movement options or restrictions to be incorporated. The set I included has 16 different action types but this could easily be modified to radically alter the game in various ways.

The heart and question mark symbols placed on the board combine with the action dice variety to provide even more strategic game play. In certain situations, players may arrange their moves to obtain pleasure rather than attempting to just “win”. Other types of symbols and corresponding activities could be added in to increase the variety of play even more. These extra choices would complicate the game for kids but make it more challenging and interesting for adults.

During initial play testing there was one thing that concerned me regarding the a dice mechanism. Although I have not done exhaustive testing to prove anything yet, there appeared to be too many duplicate values showing up in successive rolls. This may be an issue with how I coded the XML or something deeper in the randomizer. It may just be my imagination or preconceived expectation of how I wanted it to work.

One other thing that might need tweaking is the frequency distribution that certain action symbols should show up relative to others. If you take a look at the StripTease_game.xml file, the line:

<single_tap action=”random_side” args=”v2,0_1_2_3_4_5_6_7_8_9_10_11_12_13_14_15_2_0_0_2,actiondice1″>

could be modified to include image index values multiple times. In this particular example, the forward and backward symbols (0,2) are both included two extra times so they should have a higher chance of showing up. I was also thinking of mixing up the order of the index values although this shouldn’t have any effect if the randomizer is working properly.

Foreplay Game Elements

The game incorporates a variety of foreplay opportunities:

• When you bump a player, tap the tease dice and creatively pleasure your lover based on the two words shown.
• When you land on a Heart, roll a Heart symbol, or your lover gets a token in Bed, tap your foreplay cards and perform the action specified.
• When you land on or roll a Question mark, take a drink, roll the tease dice, pick a foreplay card or make up your own activity.
• When you get a token in Bed, strip an article of clothing (or have your lover remove it for you).
• When you roll a pair of lips, kiss each other passionately.
• More icons or symbols could be placed on the board or included in the action dice to represent other types of special foreplay activities. For instance, a dildo image could indicate that you need to creatively use a sex toy to stimulate your partner. Or maybe a hand for a massage.

The foreplay cards are split into two coloured sections for an intimate and a more passionate activity. More intense activities are to be performed when the players are likely to be semi-naked and closer to the end of the game. I have included 20 His and 20 Her foreplay cards each with two activities to get started.

Get The Adult Board Game

Check out the rules: Strip Tease! Rules or download the full game and upload it onto your iPad.

Right Click on the Link and Choose Save As to download the .EGE file and install on your iPad:

Strip Tease! Adult Board Game Design (EGE file)
Strip Tease! Adult Board Game Design (ZIP file)

Remember that you do need the EveryGame app to run it. If the ege file doesn’t work, try the zip instead – they are the same file just renamed.

I hope you enjoy playing Strip Tease! This is my first adult board game design for the EveryGame app on the iPad. It still needs a lot more play testing and most likely a bit of fine tuning. Please leave a comment with any recommendations you have for improving the game play. His and Her foreplay card suggestions are welcome too. Be sure to visit again for updates and more adult games for couples.

Technorati Tags: adult board game, computer board games, foreplay games, games for couples, strip game

As mentioned in my previous post, there is a Sorry! clone called My Apologies available with the EveryGame app for the iPad. My thought for a fun initial adult board game design was to adapt my foreplay variation of the classic game to run with the app. The erotic version Sexy Sorry was based on couples playing with the standard board and applying only slight rule modifications to make it into a sex game. It had to use the original components with no modifications. But these limitations can be eliminated using the iPad app:

• you can create a large variety of cards with intimate activities included if desired
• you can add extra sets of cards with detailed foreplay ideas or sexy challenges
• you can spice up the board with extra graphics on the cards, cells or background
• you can create a new board layout that is more suited to couples play
• you can add creative new game components/mechanics to enhance it even more

Let’s investigate a few design options and ideas for a new foreplay game. For the following discussion, I will assume you already know the rules and general game play elements of the classic game.

Subsequent posts will provide more implementation details and sample files once the design is worked out.

Theme Concept

The basic game is designed around a race to the finish objective while attempting to stop or send your opponent back. In a romantic sexual context, finishing fast is usually frowned upon unless you’re having a quickie. And stopping your partner is even worse. But, consider the fact that delaying orgasm while building erotic tension can lead to an even more intense climax. In this context, it would be “okay” to delay your partner. It would be even better if you included something to stimulate their desire and increase their arousal. This is where the various foreplay type activities would come into play.

Also, most couples usually have sex in bed so this would be a natural destination point in the game. To fit with the theme, rather than just getting Home, the players would actually race to get in Bed first. Since this is for couples, you don’t want them going off to their own separate beds either. A slight redesign could have a central bed with both player’s goal path leading to it – from opposite sides of course. “Honey, Come to Bed Quick but Don’t Come Quick” seems like a good basis for a theme.

Foreplay Game Elements

Since we are looking to design an adult board game, we want to include various foreplay activities geared around and supporting the theme. I still like the original idea from the sexy suggestions version:

When you Bump into your lover and send them back to the start, saying Sorry just isn’t enough – apologize with sensual pleasuring.

But there is a little bit of a problem with this. As more of the tokens get to the finish, there are less bumping opportunities at a time when you would expect there should be more pleasuring going on. The end game could become less exciting from an sexual arousal perspective. Here are a few possible solutions:

• when a player gets a token in bed, they strip off an article of clothing. Most people tend to have about 4 basic items of clothing on so this would fit since there are 4 tokens. And when you get all your tokens in, strip completely naked. This also fits the theme in that players would be stripping to have sex in bed. Stripping is also considered an erotic stimulus – both viewing and doing.
• include a number of special locations designated with an icon that indicates players are to take a drink, perform a foreplay activity, accept a sexual challenge or answer a question when they land on them. Extra sets of cards could be included in addition to the movement deck to provide random activities. Even if bumping does not occur, there is still a chance of landing on these locations.
• use the number of tokens in bed to indicate the level of foreplay possibly selected from different decks of cards. There is a maximum of 6 levels (both players have 3 tokens in bed) so 3/6 decks of cards might be needed with at least 10 or more items each. Alternatively, rather than creating huge sets of card images, various foreplay activity sheets in PDF could be used with each successive page/file containing more intense or explicit types of activities. A random method of selecting from within each sheet would be required but it should be the same for each level. Note: Coincidentally, the dice based Frisky Foreplay game comes with 6 levels of foreplay each with 36 unique ideas for both men and women. The activity sheets from this game could be used directly but would require that a red/black dice rolling mechanism be included. Since I want to provide this as a free game download, I will not put in a reference to this product initially.

There should also be some form of sex oriented reward for winning the game. This could be specified by the players at the start or provided in idea cards selected throughout the game.

Board Design & Layout

If you take a look at the My Apologies game on EveryGame, you’ll notice there is very little screen real-estate to add extra decks of cards. To make room for more, the movement cards could be replaced with two dice. One with numbers 1-12 and an icon for special moves. The other die would have various symbols corresponding to forward, backward, split, switch, etc. You could even add options not in the classic game. For instance, a symbol could mean kiss each other instead of moving.

Even if the movement cards are retained, the redesign of the board for just two players might make room for one or two decks of foreplay/sexplay cards. Possibly a male and female version so that the foreplay activities don’t need to be overly generalized into gender neutral descriptions. The cards could also be easily swapped out for lesbian and gay versions too.

Game Terminology

Rather than men or pieces, it would be preferable to incorporate the theme around the tokens too. For instance, they could represent head, body, arms and legs. Or, they could represent the emotional, intellectual, physical and spiritual components of our personality that make us all unique as lovers.

Also, the term Bump somewhat fits with the theme but it could be renamed Tease even though players are tempting each other WITH the intention of satisfying the desire. (not a strict usage according to the definition of being a tease)

Closing Thoughts

Since there is stripping and teasing as main elements of the game play and theme, Strip & Tease might be a good name for this adult board game design. Come to Bed Quick could be a sub title. Now to create some design files for the game and flush out some of the ideas. This will be a good opportunity to test out the features of EveryGame and figure out the implementation details.

Technorati Tags: adult board game, foreplay games, game for couples, strip game

While searching the internet for board game design software, I came across an iPad application called EveryGame. This app is like a game engine designed so you can create your own games to run within it. In a nutshell, you make a number of image files for the board and other components like cards and tokens, an XML configuration file defining movement and placement details and a PDF file for the instructions. The app manages the display and component interaction without getting cluttered by having you program an AI layer. Players keep track of the rules and actual game play. It looks perfect for making your own adult board game designs.

Although I was contemplating the purchase of an iPad to do some game development, the EveryGame app made my decision to buy one much easier. It allows you to focus more on the game design. Rather than writing custom software for each new game, you can concentrate on the theme, mechanics and artwork. Even if you do want to program your game or make a physical product eventually, the app allows you to prototype, test and tweak the game very quickly. Fast design and test iterations are essential for making a great game. There are a few tools you will need including an iPad and the app of course:

• XML is just a plain text file so you can used Notepad on the PC or TextEdit on the Mac (plain text mode). Other specialized XML editors are available – some built in with software development tools.
• An image or graphics editor that can export PNG or GIF files (curious JPG is not included). You will need an editor that enables you to specify the coordinates of the design elements in pixels. Even if you create the images using free style drawing, you will need a way to query coordinate locations in pixels. I will be using Adobe PhotoShop and Illustrator among others.
• A word processor that can export to a PDF file is also required to create the rules file. Many of the tools on the Mac can export directly to PDF but you can also get a print driver that renders PDF for applications that don’t. Using MS Word, Pages or even Keynote, you can spiff up the look of your rules and allow embedded images but just a regular text editor can work.

Access to clip art and photos will also be helpful to enhance the aesthetics of your game while complimenting your overall theme. You’ll want to use a digital camera to get your own images especially if you eventually want to sell the game. Various digital art packages are also available to draw your own stylish graphics if desired.

When you think about, the iPad makes a great platform for erotic games in the bedroom. You can play it in low level mood light or even in the dark. And if your game involves performing various foreplay activities during play, there is no risk of messing up the board while fooling around. The game will come back exactly where you left it. Players can get as wild and frisky as they want so you can include lots of different components in your design.

People playing your game can also extend or customize it by adding in their own sex play preferences. You can include extra files to make this easy for them as a feature of your game. And best of all there are no manufacturing or distribution costs. Distribution is as easy as creating a blog post with a downloadable zip file. Check out the Stellar Web Solutions eVendor package if you want to sell your own games using PayPal from your website. It’s specially designed for electronically downloadable products. Or Signup with ClickBank and get a stream of affiliates to help market your game for increased sales.

So what are we waiting for. Let’s get down to creating some adult board game designs. To help you get some ideas, check out the Forfeits Foreplay Games site. It has a list of erotic variations based on some classic games. Since there is a Sorry! clone that comes with EveryGame, I’m thinking of adapting the Sexy Sorry! variation to play on it as well. The existing game can be used as a learning example. I will provide various sample files in future posts as I create them and explain my game concept along the way.

Technorati Tags: adult board game design, board game design software, computer board games