Tabletop games come in all shapes and sizes, from board games like Monopoly or Candyland to card games like Go Fish or Uno, and Piner sixth graders had a chance to try their luck at creating their very own original games in art class recently.

“I asked the students if they had ever gone down the aisles of stores and looked at these kinds of games,” said Piner art teacher Bill Raschendorfer. “We talked about how artists could get a job to re-illustrate games for collector’s editions and more.”

His classes reviewed board games like Candyland, Chutes and Ladders, and Operation, and Raschendorfer emphasized not only the artwork but the rules as well.

“We started reverse-engineering some of the games out there, like what’s the goal of the game,” Raschendorfer said. “I had them think about if there were pieces to the game, or how are the game’s imagery and title tied together?”

Classes then split into groups to brainstorm ideas for each student’s game. Raschendorfer wanted them to realize the importance of different roles and cooperation inside making a game, such as an editor for wording or a dedicated artist, and he gave them creative freedom to create something new and innovative.

“There’s generally more than one person to put together a game, and I wanted them to know that,” Raschendorfer said. “Some of them started out really excited but then realized it was going to take a lot longer than they expected.”

Braxton Wilson was excited by the prospect of being more creative, and while he landed on the idea of a card game, he was nervous about it at first. He didn’t know if his card game, called Mix-and-Match Wars, would be enough to entertain players.

“The rough draft looked nothing like the final one because I redesigned everything,” Wilson said. “But it turns out the game was really fun, and everyone who played it loved it.”

J’Zaiya Butler was more unsure about it and worried about losing focus on the project. By the time of the due date, Butler had finished her board game, dubbed Heart2Heart.

“I think that’s really exciting and kind of shocking,” Butler said. “Usually I’d lose focus, but I didn’t lose focus on making the game.”

Playtesting was also a part of the class, and students quickly found out if their game needed some rule adjustments by playing each other.

“There was one group where no one won the game,” Raschendorfer said. “The group came together and decided that it needed some changes.”

Emma Faries’s board game, Fruit and Veggies, had a similar problem of sometimes taking too long. It was based off Candyland, but some cards could send people back to near the starting point.

“When people didn’t know what card they were going to pull, they keep going back and back again,” Faries said. “And even if they got a good card, sometimes they would still have to go backwards.”

Raschendorfer asked his students to be masters of the rules to their own games, which sharpened critical thinking and logic skills, and through the process, they engaged with the very basics and principles of art.

“You have to pull all of that into a mixing bowl,” Raschendorfer said. “The end result is some amazing projects.”