Creating a Custom Game Board

For this project, me and my partner had to create a custom game board, coming up with different game mechanics and aspects to the board game.

For our project, we designed a game board inspired by the TV show "Arcane" by League of Legends. Game pieces are designed after characters based in the show, the map's layout follows Piltover and Zaun's stages. In this tutorial, we'll walk you through how to create your own game board, implementing varying procedures such as woodcutting, Arduino, as well as the aesthetic features.

The following supplies are needed for this project, but may vary according to what you need:

1. Arduino Uno R4 Kit
2. 2 - 12"x20" balsa wood boards
3. Sand paper
4. Laser cutting machine
5. Dice
6. 3D Printer (PLA Filament)
7. 2.75"x3.75" card
8. Paint (Acrylic/Spray)
9. Wood Glue

Depending on the structure of your game board, art supplies also come in handy!

To begin creating your customizable game board, choose the right material you want your game to take place on. Me and my partner began with a 12"x20" balsa wood board, using the shape as an outline for our layout. Initializing the process involved trimming the board down to the correct size. For a bigger board, it is preferred to draw lines on the wood to cut on. This way, our lines are precise and measured before running it over sandpaper. We typically used a sandpaper machine to achieve smooth sides, but you can use regular sandpaper to do this!

Now that you've measured out your board, use a CAD software to build your game pieces. If you haven't already, try to sketch your pieces out, dimensioning them as needed to accommodate for the board. Pieces can stretch across the map, be personalized, and placed accordingly. Modeling programs like Onshape & Blender were used to create basic pieces. We had six pieces to accommodate for, as we wanted to stay as inclusive as possible. Each piece aligned with a character's identity from Arcane, supporting our inspiration to create a League of Legends based board.

We used a 3D Printer with PLA filament to print out the pieces. It was the least time consuming, and allowed for multiple models to print simultaneously.

Afterwards, begin structuring the layout of your board. You can reference a common game board like monopoly to do this! Consider where your players will start, the different pathways they'll cross, and other navigation areas. Blocks should be big enough to hold game pieces and a good tool to measure out lines or visuals is wireframe. The website can implement different blocks or sizes, it's a good visual tool to map out your design.

It's important to set up your game rules and criteria first before you begin building your design. For our build, we dimensioned where the blocks would be, including the cards. Then, we made direct sketches onto the board, this helped build onto the next step.

After successfully designed a board's layout, the next step is to begin laser cutting one board. The other board would serve as a layer under the first, benefiting the design by creating a 3D effect. It was crucial that we provided room for the navigation areas, mapping out basic sketches onto the board helped us determine where we place these designs. Onshape was used to sketch the designs, before moving them onto Inkscape to hook up to the laser cutting machine. We exported the file as an .SVG before latching it onto the software, aligning the designs accordingly to the sketches on the board.

Once this step is finished, the board parts are completely cut out. Carefully remove them to avoid any fractures in the wood.

For this step, me and my parent carefully extracted the pieces from the laser cutting machine. Then, we placed the geometric shapes into a box, spray painting them completely. This step doesn't necessarily require you to use spray paint, acrylic is also fine.

Once we finished painting the tinier pieces, we moved onto painting the untouched board. This board would serve as a layer underneath our laser cut one. We chose to paint the board into a green and yellow, splitting it down the middle. Afterwards, we used a sharpie to draw our blocks on the first board, which was what the player would move across.

Once dried, we used wood glue to glue the board parts onto the painted board. This would give the board a 3D effect once the two balsa woods were eventually joined together! We referenced the CAD design for positioning. Once we felt confident enough it was dry, we spread out glue onto our laser cut board before pressing it down on the painted board. Clamps were used to stabilize the piece and keep them jointed together. If you don't have clamps, place something heavy on top of the board to press it down.

Now that the boards were fully joined together with wood glue, it was time to get the game on it. The board still needed to be painted at the top and have blocks of texts. For this step, begin writing the text on the board. Labelling all the blocks as needed.

Then, we incorporated fun design aspects! Painting over the final pieces and adding gold accents.

To conclude, we developed a system using Arduino to test whether or not a player has won the game. For our board game, a player would need three hexgems to be able to win. You can program this with Arduino. Once the player reaches the winning block, they’ll need to input how many gems they have through buttons. These buttons will connect to the Arduino, giving us an input. Connect this output to the LED, so once it's true, the LED will flash indicating a player has won the game.

Once finished, take the breadboard and set it up near the winning position.