Graphic Design · Creative Concept · Visual System · Prototyping

I have three boys who all love basketball. They love to play it most, but they also love to watch it, to argue about players, to impersonate them and follow media stories about them. They just cannot get enough basketball. However, Saskatchewan has long cold winters and there is not much opportunity for them to play basketball during this time.

I came up with the idea of creating a custom basketball game that mixed their passion with strategy so that they (or we as a family) could spend time together through the cold winter months. I was hoping to help provide them with something to play, compete, laugh and enjoy each other’s company as a family.

I enlisted the help of my boys, especially my youngest son Jack. We talked gameplay and design options and ended up playing multiple various versions of my homemade game, writing, changing and rewriting rules to find a game with a rhythm and gameplay that was fun, unpredictable and that awarded strategic decision-making but also had an element of luck. It was quite the process!

Bringing the Elements Together

Eventually, after several months of working on it as I found the energy and drive, I had created a table-top basketball game. It creatively combined graphic design, strategy and some fun physical prototyping. I designed a visual system of player cards, gameplay actions and scoring mechanics around two core roles: general manager and coach. As GM, players start each game working with a limited budget to draft a balanced roster of athletes with different prices, strengths and weaknesses. Once done, they take on the role of coach, where they must decide which combinations of players to use, how to manage changing situations and react to an opponent’s strategy. It combines their decision-making with the luck of he dice and the homemade spinner.

There were several really tough design challenges.  The toughest was how to make a large amount of information like player value, offensive and defensive abilities, situational strengths and gameplay outcomes, easy to understand at a glance, while still keeping the system visually cohesive across 40 individual player cards. The spinner, dice and tiles (the money in the game) introduce chance and uncertainty, but the game is structured so that strategic decisions still matter.

The project was a challenging exercise in information-design and creative problem-solving. I developed the card system, player-value structure, spinner-based actions, currency mechanics and overall gameplay flow, then built several different physical prototypes. We rummaged through the house to find a mix of custom-designed and repurposed components ( dice, wooden tiles from a previous crafting project, a homemade spinner and a box that held all the pieces efficiently, repurposed from buying my glasses). The goal was to create something that felt visually engaging but also had enough rhythm, balance and unpredictability to function as a playable game for young teens through adults.

Game On!

While I still don’t have a set of polished rules, today we have a fairly finished homemade basketball game that the boys can play with each other or their friends. It’s fairly easy to learn, visually stimulating and exciting, requires thought and strategic decision-making and it even helps them with their math – budgeting and learning to spend their money wisely. It helps to satisfy their need for competition through the cold winter months contributes to giving them their basketball fix when they cannot be outside or in the gym.

It cost about $15 total and is something that we all put lots of thought and work into. I’m extremely proud of it and hope that in addition to the hours of fun they have playing, that it becomes one of those lessons in life that teaches my boys they can accomplish difficult things, if they put their mind to it and commit to the process of trying, failing, adjusting and repeating this over and over.