Keisha, Andrew, Tan, Mark, Hawzien 4/26/10 The Love Gamble
Welcome to Las Vegas! Have a seat and relax while you play Sin City’s hottest game, The Love Gamble! The Love gamble begins when you and your partner decide that you want to take a chance on love. Will you be able to withstand the obstacles that emerge in your way, and happily make it to the Elvis Wedding Chapel? Or will the stages of coming apart steer you right out of Glitter Gulch? Give love a shot at The Love Gamble!
The title of our game is called The Love Gamble. Although this name is catchy and might seem quite effortless, it actually took our group a long time to come up with the perfect title. Our game is centered around the 5stages of coming together and apart, so at first we had the concept of mountain and valleys, thus our title of our game would be No Mountain High No Valley Low. After much consideration we decided that the name was too long and instead took our concept into a completely different path. After a great deal of brainstorming we came with the name The Love Gamble and consecutively decided to give our game a Las Vegas theme.
The instructions of our game also took a long time to completely conceive. We all had different ideas that we wanted to contribute to the game, some ideas being great, and others being a bit too complicated for a simple game. Our instructions are as follows. The game is ideally designed for couples and up to 4 couples can play. Contents- In each game of The Love Gamble, there are a pair of dice, one stack of 32 cards (20 of which represent the coming apart side of the board, and the other 12 representing the coming together side. Of the 20, 10 cards are the stages, and the other 10 are scenarios. Of the 12, 5 cards are the stages, and 7 are scenarios). There are also four game pieces and a set of instructions/rules. Objective- The objective of the game is to complete all five steps of coming together and make it to the Elvis Wedding Chapel before the other couples. To begin each member of the couple grabs one die and rolls, there total is added. The other couples in the group do the same. Which ever couple has the highest score plays first. The couple starts on the path headed towards the Elvis Wedding Chapel, although there are obstacles that will challenge there relationships and head them straight out of Vegas. To move along the board, couples will again individual roll a die and there added total will determine how many spaces along the board they will move. When a couple lands on a space
indicated to pick up a card, the top card is taken, followed, and then placed at the bottom of the pile. Each card will have a scenario that either betters their relationship or challenges it. The cards that better the relationship will take them through each stage of coming together (initiating, experimenting, intensifying, integrating, and bonding). While the cards that challenge the relationship will sometimes require the couple to cross over to the coming apart stages of the board (differentiating, circumscribing, stagnating, avoiding, and terminating).Whoever makes there relationship work and is first to the Elvis Wedding Chapel is the winner! Our target audience is couples from the ages of 18-30 who are looking to take their relationship to the next level. The goal is to get these couples talking about the challenges of relationships and if there relationship would be truly able to withstand tough times. Our game cost $14.99, a price that too was taken into much consideration by our team. At first some members of our team believed that the price should be closer to around $30.00, but after some research we decided that $14.99 was not only a better deal, but was more closely aligned to prices of other games out right now. Our research on this price comparison to other games consisted of a lot of online window shopping, most of which was done on Target.com. At Target, simple board games that did not come with a lot of fancy gadgets were priced around $14.99-$20.99 (Guess Who, Monopoly, Life,
etc), whereas more complex board games ranged up to $30.00 (Taboo, Scene It, Apples to Apples). Since our board was simple in complexity, we decided to price it on the lower end of the scale.