5. Mr. Marble

; MR version of the boardgame “Blue Marble”

Play with MR. MARBLE
wherever you want with your friends!

Existing online games have a strong experience of enjoying themselves.
However, by providing board games with MRs, the players can experience as being right next to them more vividly.
To begin with, we reinterpreted the classic board game 'Blue Marble.'

Why we want to make
board games into MR?

interactive experience in the same place

cannot fully enjoy the mood in the same place

Although there’s so many online games in the world, people still enjoy board games in same space. They can feel other players’ emotion and enjoy the moment together, and these are the attractive points of board games.
But it is hard to play board games when people are far away to each other. Without any interaction or feedback, people can’t immersed in the game easily.

We focus on this point, and we want to make board games more interactive, and more connected, even if each player is in the different place.

︎Inspired by “Blue Marble” game
Blue Marble is a Korean board game similar to Monopoly. While Monopoly is traditionally played across locations in a single city, the Blue Marble Game features cities from across the world.

By making MR boardgame,
we want to give 3 experiences to users!

The games become more exciting with effects.

People can play board games even
they were far away to each other.

With hand gestures, the games can
be more interactive and fun.

MR. MARBLE,
MR version of the “Blue Marble”

you can play the board games wherever you are,
even all the players in the different place.

︎ 3D attractive works ︎
We also design and make 3D elements to show our concepts more effectively.

MR board and the earth

Landmarks

Markers(astronaunts)

Golden key boxes & keys

Buildings

The deserted island

︎ Branding ︎
The name “MR. MARBLE” has two meanings
: the one is a personification of the board game 'Blue Marble, and the other is the MR version of the Blue Marble game.

Also, we make a graphic logo and set colors palettes which can be suitable to explain our concept.

main graphic logo

︎ Key elements ︎
We design the 5 main interactive effects in the MR, and want to give users more interactive experience.

Rolling dice
You can spin the Earth like rolling dice with hands.

Landmark
When you arrive at city, the landmark will appear.

Choose building You can control types with hands to choose.

Deserted island You have to move and try to escape from deserted island.

Winning effect Several effects will be appear when you win
the game.

Start the game
and meet with other players!

Players can start the game by opening physical board. Then, the Earth will pop up and start to rotate to show amusing effect.
You can meet other players by characters even though they are far away to each other.

Spin the Earth
to move your marker.

In your turn, you can spin the Earth to choose your destination. When the Earth is spinning, the light dots shows on it.
Then the Earth turns slowly and stop from specific location. In this part, the light will turn into red.

Move into the other city.

Your marker will move, as many as the previous globe has been rotated.
At this time, the marker’s design is set up as an astronaut traveling through the Blue Marble instead of a spaceship.

Markers’ design : astronaunts

Pop up the Landmarks
in the center.

Whenever players go to specific city, they can see the landmark of the city.
This effect makes them delightful to arrive in new city.

Choose building type
by putting up and down with your hands.

Players can choose building models by moving their hands up and down.
When they move hands, they can see how much does it costs.

Construct a building.

After you choose your building type, with the special effect, you can see the building constructed.

Jump to the golden key zone,
and use a golden key to treasure boxes.

5 Treasure boxes pop up after getting a golden key. Players can choose one of them to get a event.

Open the treasure box.

Players can open the treasure box by the golden key they got. Then, they can see a message in it.
The message can be good or bad to players.

Escape from the desert island.

When a player goes to an desert island (the Bermuda Triangle on Earth), the desert island pops up in the middle and guides someone to move from the real space to the desert island. (If the player is difficult to move, it is fine to be there.)

You have two options to escape the desert island.
To escape faster, you must proceed with rafting, or send an SOS sign to wait for rescue until the turn returns.

Escape from the desert island actively
Through mini-games, you can get the right to escape while you can't play. Until the turn returns, the trees are cut down and ropes are tied together in an interactive way to escape.

Make a SOS sign, and wait for your turn
Just like the previous game, they are resting on a deserted island until the turn returns By sending an SOS sign, you can send a rescue sign to another player or you have the option of waiting still.

Enjoy the special winner effect!

Win the game and enjoy the winner's mood!
Make the winner's gesture and record with the various effects that are only given to the winner.

Research using MR

We looked at examples of real games or concepts that exist today, and we summarized two main examples of which direction we should develop.

(1) Changing tires
- devoloping the marker/pieces in MR while playing games

︎ youtude link

(2) Mario carts in MR(AR+VR)
- real obstacles and hurdles in real space + virtual race

︎ youtude link1
︎ youtude link2

In addition to specific examples, we studied various images and thought about how MR games should be implemented. We wanted users to experience the game more interactive, and in the process, we focused on hand, or board games, which is a small range of things rather than using the whole body.

Hand gestures for board game

Before the project began in earnest, we focused on the various hand gestures that could come out during the board game. During the game, the most active means for users to move was thought to be "hand”, so we defined the kind of basic gestures and thought about which parts to pay attention to and which parts to present.

Play the board game ‘Blue Marble’

For a better understanding of the project, we actually went to a board game cafe and played the 'Blue Marble' game. We wrote down a number of touch points and various interactions that could occur during the game.

About Physical Interactions

We discuss about 3 main points about physical interactions : what interactions or experiences should be removed, changed, and added. By doing this, we tried to change or remove the existing somewhat boring points, strengthen various interactions that are the main points of board games, or suggest new interaction directions, and try to interact in the best way possible.

User Scenarios

(1) Main storyboard

Open board - start menu - virtual players
To start a game, each player unfolds the physical board panel, which is a port to MR And then, the virtual blue marble pops up from the board, which is a main control panel.
And each player can see other game members who are palying in different places At the beginning, the virtual members are shown as like real, but they can become as small as markers, or become an avatar they set.

Rolling dice/spinning earth
Instead of rolling the dice, make a hand-spinning gesture of the globe floating in the middle of the board. When you turn the globe around, it turns on randomly in a variety of areas, which correspond to the number of squares that the player can go to, and then stops when the lights come on in the area that corresponds to the final destination.

Landmark scenes - Constructing buildings
When a player arrives at a city, the virtual city model shows up at the center. In the beginning, there are only landmarks.
After the player buys the city, villas, buildings, hotels, will be built around the landmarks.

Desert island(special zone)
In the original Blue Marble game, there is a special penalty zone, the deserted island.
In the MR version of Blue Marble, if a player goes to the deserted island, he or she should follow some instructions to pose and call for help

Money Effect
When a player arrived at another player’s property, he/she has to pay rent to the owner. Special effects of money transfer will be shown. Money drops from the player when he/she is bankrupt.