Playskool: 2 in 1 Bounce & Roll!

Beneath the umbrella of companies now with Hasbro is Tiger, who focused a lot on fun games and electronics.  

Clearly inspired by Tiger's successful 'Bulls-Eye Ball' game, Playskool decided to produce a similar skee-ball for their preschool line.  It had the same action and electronic score features as Bulls-Eye Ball, just scaled up and having the additional feature of being either a skee-ball or 'bounce' mode, like the classic. 

The creatives at Playskool tapped me to execute some quick sketches exploring what that might look like.
Here are some passes at styling the overall game as well as exploring the folding and ball return function;

    













Here is how the final product turned out;

   

JENGA! - Jenga Max and Jenga Boom

The game Jenga has become a perennial favorite over the years. At this point there have been a number of spin-offs,  even an oversized patio/yard version.
Some years back Hasbro Games called on me to help them explore a new tabletop version of Jenga that used an entirely new method of block stacking.  And instead of the tower ultimately collapsing from tipping, it relied on a magnetic hub that dropped when the imbalance went beyond its limit.

The play-pattern and basic design had been resolved by the time I was tapped, my task was in exploring the design of the base and top hub.  Aside from aesthetics, I needed to consider storage of the blocks as well as different ways they might hang off the top hub.  We also needed to have a logo or two in there.   

Here are the initial sketches exploring the base, center hub and outer ring of Jenga Max.
I started by generating a universal view of the set in play, then just swapping out a number of different designs for the rest. It saved some time while still providing scale and context;

I deliberately separated those parts in layers to allow for switching out bases and tops.
One combination they chose went on to receive a round of color studies;

They ultimately went with a more subtle color palate, the final look leaning toward an older audience;

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Jenga BOOM came a few years later, this time the design process focusing less on style and overall presentation and more on basic mechanics.  In this case, they wanted something at the base of a regular Jenga tower that was on a timing mechanism.  The play would be heightened by a time limit on each move, almost like the game Perfection.  If you don't finish your move in time and reset the mechanism, then BOOM; the tower 'explodes'.  Somehow.
That's where I came in.
I was asked to explore a range of possibilities from ones that resembled a cluster of standard Jenga blocks, to more obvious ones abandoning any attempt to disguise the mechanism.  The main thing to solve was that it needed to be simple, work every time, and look really cool when it blew.

Simple rough sketches, but that's all that was needed; 

They liked the TNT concept but it was small and hidden in the core of the tower.

Ultimately they came up with a combination of some of the above elements to produce Jenga BOOM!

more Monopoly

After I was brought in by Hasbro Games to re-design the moving tokens, houses, and hotels for their 70th Anniversary Edition, the creatives there asked me to work on pieces for a couple of other Monopoly games in their catalog.

One was for Hasbro's; Monopoly Junior, which plays younger and features an amusement park theme.  Again, my task was to design the moving tokens as well as little ticket booths, which are used similarly to Monopoly 'houses' in game play.  Monopoly Junior comes with 4 'park ride' tokens; a carousel horse, a roller coaster car,  a bumper car, and a log run boat.  And like the previous Monopoly project, I initially submitted 2 possible options for each piece.
Here are the designs for the moving tokens;

 













Here are the drawings for the ticket booth design;

Of course these pieces are tiny when actually produced, but the details reduce nicely.  Here is how they look with the rest of the game;

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Another spinoff I worked on was Monopoly Tropical Tycoon, which is skewed for an older demographic, comes with an interactive DVD, and has more play pieces.















The 6 themed moving tokens in this version are; a cannon, a sandal, a hat, a scooter, a parrot, and a sailboat.  In this case they wanted more than a couple of options for the hat;

 
















Unlike the single 'ticket booth' in Monopoly Junior, or the basic houses and hotels in the classic version, Monopoly Tropical Tycoon uses a wide variety of themed pieces to populate properties owned; beach houses, resorts, casinos, parks, piers, and restaurants;

Here is how the produced version looks with the parts I designed;