There were many things to consider during designing the game. 

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Firstly, we discussed the type of game. We hoped to make an interactive game or an app; however we realised that due to the software which would be required this wasn't going to be feasible. We felt that keeping an interactive element to our game would be important in order to engage younger people and maintain interest. At this point we decided that we would make a board game based very loosely on the principles of Monopoly (owning tiles) with a website and QR codes on the board and cards to make the website an integral part of the game.

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Secondly, the mechanics of the game had to be finalised. Having settled on a dice-based game with ownership of board tiles, we decided to split the natural world into 'divisions' which would be on different coloured tiles. The divisions we chose were mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, marine life, insects & arachnids, and plants. While some of these sections unfortunately overlap, whales being both mammals and marine life, we thought that these sections would be the simplest and easiest to understand, while covering most forms of life.

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The idea of calling the ownership of tiles 'patents' and each player representing a company came as we moved beyond the simple mechanism of the game to try and give it context. With the fundamental principle of biomimicry being engineering solutions to human problems using nature, having the players take the part of engineering companies seeking inspiration made sense. 

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Then the research started! Each person was given two or three divisions to research the animals and adaptations. The error of deciding on divisions before research quickly became apparent - while there were many examples of biomimicry in the mammals section, there were fewer in the amphibians or marine life sections. Nevertheless we stuck at our research to find 9 examples in each division, the maximum number possible before we felt we were repeating ourself in some of the sections. 



We then began to put the design of the game together, with the more creative member of our team meticulously designing logos, the board, the cards using only paint and Microsoft word - which may have been a little ambitious! The other members of our team put together the website by cutting our research into paragraphs that would be understandable to people with only a basic knowledge of science, but not too simplified as to bore any players who had a more in depth knowledge.



It was at this point, following our research that we began to discuss the target age range. We had decided not to set this before the research as we didn't know how difficult to understand the examples of biomimicry would be. Having tested some of the questions we designed on younger siblings and friends we settled upon key stage three aged students (11-14). While required in the brief we didn't like how restrictive an age range seemed, as the game might be of interest to higher ability younger children and be beyond the understanding of some older students. So we feel that the aptitude and interest in science that the child has is more important than their age in determining whether the game is appropriate to them.

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As with any challenge there are some things which we would change, given the challenge again, and some things which as a team we are very proud of.



We like the graphics and logos that we have developed and the overall feel of the game which we think is very professional. The QR codes and the website which we have designed has taken a lot of time, but again we hope these enhance the game as a whole.

Quite often time management and missing the deadlines we set ourselves was a weakness, and the delegation of responsibility wasn't always equal. However, we feel that all the jobs that were delegated were given to the correct person, with some of us being more creatively minded than others. 



In order to improve a game the most important thing is working with focus groups to find out what works, what requires improvement, and what isn't as easy to understand as we hoped. On completion of the game we did this to an extent with younger siblings, however having more chance to do this, or talking to teachers about what students can be expected to know at certain ages could have led to more fine tuning.