After play testing with friends and students I realized that pre-printed cards would benefit the game. So we began the process of designing the cards.

The first step was thinking of the words we could use for each category. In the beginning we just brainstormed lists of adjectives while we were driving. How many nouns could we think of before the concert started? How many verbs in ING could we think of for every letter of the alphabet? How many adverbs could we list before one of who say, “um, is that a real word?”

Then came the grunt work of fine tuning the lists, defining all the words, and coming up with all the similar words. That has been the most tedious part of the project so far. We’ve been working on it for over a month and its still not done. A big shout out to all our friends who helped up proofread, edit, and brainstorm! You guys are the best and we would have never finished without you!

After we designed the cards we started searching for printers to help with a prototyping! But that’s next weeks adventure ☺

Last week I mentioned how after play testing Düdle with friends we decided it was important to get cards printed with the words on them to cut down on people recognizing their own words. Another big influence on card design came from the play testing I did with my students. As an intermediate school art teacher, I decided that Düdle would be a great activity for the art room and decided to test out the concept with some of my classes.

The first time I tested the game it was still just an idea. It was an early dismissal day at the end of the year. My fifth graders had completed their assignment and we had 15 minutes to spare, just enough for a test game. “Lets play a game!” was all I had to say and they were sold on whatever I was selling them.

The first challenge was the words. I had no cards. So the kids would have to make up their own. So I handed out little squares of paper and gave the first direction, “Write down one adjective.” A few heads bowed and began writing, a few others looked thoughtful, but many of them stared at me blankly. “Ok, lets review, what’s an adjective? Remember, language arts happens in more than just your language arts classroom.”

“A describing word,” shouted out one of the students already writing. I ignored the fact that he had shouted out instead of raising his hand (we only had 15 minutes and I hadn’t budgeted time for reviewing parts of speech) and continued, “Yes! And adjective is a describing word. Who can give me an example of an adjective or a describing word. Go ahead, shout them out.”

“Smelly!” “Smart!” “Fast!” “Fancy” “Gigantic!” “Crazy!” words came from around the room. The bleary eyed students got the idea and started shouting out their own adjectives.

“Great! You got it! Now think of an adjective and right it on your square. Then fold it in half and go put it in the bin labeled Adjectives.”

While they worked on brainstorming their adjectives I gave them all two more squares.

“Ok, next! Write down two different nouns.” and before I could get the stares, “And who can tell me what a noun is?”

This time a hand went up. “Yes, Jack, what’s a noun?”

“A person, place or thing,” he smiled.

“Or idea!” of course the shouter needed to add his two cents.

“Yes, a noun is a person, place, thing or idea. But remember, someone else is going to have to draw the noun you write down, so you may want to avoid ideas. A 'school' would probably be easier to illustrate than 'education', right?”

They nodded emphatically in agreement and began writing their nouns.

Then came verbs. I was ready.  I knew adverbs were going to be more trouble then they were worth, it was supposed to be fun after all.

“Ok, last, write down one verb ending in ING. Who can tell me what a verb is and give me an example of one ending in ING?” We went through the process and finished up writing words.

Then I demonstrated how to pick one paper from the adjective bin, two from the noun box, and one from the verb bowl. Then I showed them my words: Strong, Cat, Cow, Running and drew a quick sketch of a muscular cat with spots, hooves, and utters running with a marathoner's bib.

“See? You have to get creative! How will you combine your two nouns? How will you show your verb and adjective? But keep your words secret! Have fun, do your best and then share your drawings with your table-mates and see if you can guess each others words!”

Their eyes lit up. They quickly collected their little squares of folded paper. Some laughing as they pieced their words together, some exclaiming, “what!?,” while others came to me for help deciphering their classmates handwriting or to exchange their word for one of the proper part of speech. Some giggled as they drew while others concentrated with furrowed brows. Then, as tables started to share, came the undeniable noise of children playing a game. Shouting, laughing, pointing, urging, guessing, giving hints. “Ohhhhhh! You’re sooooo close!” “That’s totally a hamburger!” “No way, its cake!” “What letter does it start with?” “Yeah! You got it!!!”

In the end, we only had time for one round that first day... and just barely, but the kids had a great time. The next time their class came to art several students asked, “Are we going to play that game again?!” It was a huge success. Since that first day, I’ve played with many more of my classes. Düdle has become a standard “free time” and reward activity. That has motivated me even more to get official Düdle cards printed as a way to cut down on the waste of all those little scraps of paper and eliminate having to weed out illegible, incorrect, and inappropriate words thought up by students.

So stay tuned fellow teachers! Soon you’ll be able to get your own copy of Düdle for your classroom!

Throughout the game design process people have asked us where the idea from Düdle came from. Like most ideas, it has had lots of influences. Here’s the closest version to an origin story I can come up with. One day after spending time playing board games with friends Benn suggested, “We should make up our own board games.” That was enough to start a discussion of what kind of board game would we try to make. What kinds of games do we like to play that we think we could design ourselves? Ideas were batted back and forth. It went a little something like this...

“I would want to make a simple game, like a card game. Games like Fluxx, Set, Apples to Apples, and Cards Against Humanity are all super fun and pretty simple to learn,” I mused.

“A card game wouldn’t be hard to manufacture,” suggested Benn.

“I also love drawing and art games like Pictionary, Telestrations, and Draw Something.”

“It’s true, you do love those.”

“Maybe I could combine them!”

I remembered an idea generating activity I had done once in college where the class illustrated phrases composed of random words. Specifically I remembered my phrase and the picture I drew of “a hungry penguin-ocelot flying grumpily.”

“What if we made a game where people picked random words and made a phrase out of them and then had to illustrate that phrase? What if it was structured adjective – noun – noun – verb ending in ing – adverb?”

“Sounds like fun. Would there be an objective? Could you ‘win’ this game?” asked Benn.

“What if you didn’t tell people what your phrase was and the other people you were playing with had to try and guess your phrase based on the drawing?”

And the game design continued from there. We play tested with our friends. In the beginning, each player would get scraps of paper and write down words matching the desired parts of speech, throw the papers into different bowls, mix up the papers and then draw words from the bowls. We drew some very silly pictures and had a really great time! But, we always ran into the problem, “I know that’s supposed to be a tree-frog because I wrote down tree-frog as one of my nouns, that has to be spelunking because I wrote down spelunking... do I say it or keep my mouth shut?” Or worse, people would mix up their parts of speech and put adjectives in the verb bowl. Or write down proper nouns that were almost impossible to draw.

So the next logical step was to print cards with words on them, so all you had to do was shuffle a deck of adjectives and pick one. Then do the same with nouns, verbs, and adverbs. Unintentional-accidental cheating eliminated!

Somewhere along the line the game was named Düdle. Ever since we have been working on designing the cards, play testing the game, researching printers and looking for funding sources. We’ve learned a lot along the way! So hopefully you enjoyed this little origin story and will stay tuned for entries about parts of the game design process.