In Season...

An apple a day...

What is In Season?

In Season is a 2-4 player game aimed at teaching players all about the growing patterns of fruits and vegetables in Ontario. The game is educational and as such, is more straight-forward and less action-packed than most games but it most certainly a quick and easy way to learn all about the seasonal patterns of fruits and vegetables in Ontario.

The gameplay is simple and engaging, encouraging inter-player activity and discussion about the various fruits and vegetables found on the many cards provided with the game. Quite simple to pick up and play, ‘In Season’ is a prototype which finds the joy in learning.

  

Game Time

A typical game of ‘In Season’ can take anywhere from 15 minutes to half an hour or even longer.

Contents

The game comes with 50 cards each of which present the player with a vegetable and the season it is known to grow/flourish in. Since ‘In Season’ is made to be a playing card game, this is all you will need to play…of course don’t forget to bring your friends along!

Set-up

The deck of cards must be shuffled thoroughly and placed in a pile face down on the table.

Rules

·        Each player begins with 4 cards.

·        A random player is chosen to go first.

·        Steps in a turn:

o   The player must draw a card from the deck.

o   Now, the player must check to see if he/she has a complete set (5 cards from the same month).

o   If the player has a set, they must place this down in front of them for everyone to see. The set is considered complete.

o   Once a set is complete the player must pick up another 4 cards and pass play to the next player on their left.

o   If the player has not achieved a full set after drawing a card on his/her turn, he/she must pick a random card from another player's deck.

o   The player must now swap this card for another in their hand, giving the swapped out card to the other player.

o   Once again, if a set is made, it is the responsibility of the player to play that set and draw an additional 4 cards from the deck once more.

o   If no set is made, play passes on to the next player on the left.

                       

                               

Game Overview

A typical run-through of ‘In Season’ sees players swapping cards and creating sets out of pure luck. Admittedly, there isn’t much strategy involved in the gameplay except for that involved in the decision to give up a certain card to another player. The goal of the game is to collect as many different sets of fruits and vegetables as possible, thus making the game a growing-cycle based collection game.

Each month of the year has a specific group of fruits and vegetables which make up a set. Fruits and vegetables may even belong to more than one set as certain plants grow through multiple time periods during the year. This is meant to mirror the seasonal growth patterns of fruits and vegetables in Ontario.

A month’s set is considered complete when a player holds the necessary fruits and vegetables for that month. This means that if a player collects 5 fruits and vegetables (including repeats) of a certain month, they have, in essence, gained a set which adds to their successful completion of the game. The player with the most sets by the end of the game, then, wins.

Any fruits and vegetables that may be part of a month’s set correspond to the seasonal growing patterns of that fruit or vegetable.

Creative Process

When mulling through ideas for a game that teaches people about seasonal growth patterns in Ontario, none of us could imagine a fun game to be made out of such a boring topic. No university student really cares about when fruits and vegetables grow throughout the year. As long as they appear in supermarkets, their growth patterns are of least concern. So how then were we to take a topic that appeals to a different demographic and adapt it into a game to appeal to people of all ages?

Well, what’s a game that is simple enough to pick up and play by any one and can be explained in less than 2 minutes? We went with GO-FISH for that answer and based our gameplay mechanics primarily around the core concepts of this simple game that is well known all over the world and played by men and women of all ages. We thoroughly researched which fruits and vegetables grew around which time of year and made sure that we represented their growth patterns accurately within our game.

Since the idea of the game was to teach people about fruits and vegetables within Ontario and when they grow, we dumbed down our game and stripped it to its bare essentials to make it as simple and entertaining as possible. We came up with a clever name and created some fun cards to peak players’ interests.

We had played around with the idea of a fruit and vegetable based game of Solitaire where each fruit and vegetable would be placed in its own column based on the month in which it grows. We decided to avoid this idea due to the possible complexity and varying card types.

  

Conclusion

The purpose of our game was to teach people about the seasonal patterns of fruits and vegetables in Ontario in an engaging manner. Though, I admit, that our game might not be as entertaining, it does what it sets out to do and is simple enough to be marketed to a wider demographic.