How to create your own Board Game

Creating your own board game is a fun thing to do during self-isolation. It isn’t only fun to create the board game, but playing it with your quarantined roomies is just as fun (if not more). This blog post is a step-by-step guide to create your own board game. Check out our DIY Board Game video for a visual guide.

It’s a snake trail board game with drawing cards. On the drawing cards you will find different kinds of funny assignments. The assignments are all relevant to the current self-isolation situation.

What you need:

Paper
Pencil
Markers
Eraser
Scissors
Tape

The board

Tape four sheets of paper together. I’m using thicker, colored paper, but you can use whatever kind of paper you have at home (yes, even paper from a notebook). Once the paper is taped together, turn it over. Use a pencil to draft the snake trail, if you make any mistakes you can still erase them. Draw a straight line every 4cm in the snake trail to create spaces. Write down ‘start’ at the first space and ‘end’ at the last space. Draw a question mark in every third space. Write ‘3 spaces forward’, ‘2 spaces back’, etc. in the blank spaces. You can mix things up. You can also leave some spaces blank, if you like to.

Now the outline of the board is finished, you can make it look pretty with colored markers. Overwrite the pencil writings with a black marker so it’s better readable.

The cards

Grab four sheets of paper to create the cards. Fold the paper like this:

Now you have eight rectangles. Cut along the folded lines to get eight cards from one sheet of paper. Do the same with the other three sheets of paper, so you will have 32 cards in total.

Draw a question mark on the back of each card. Write down different kinds of assignments on the front of each card. These are the assignments I used:

3x Perform a TikTok dance
3x Trade spaces with another player
3x Roll again
3x Sing a TikTok song
2x You’re out of toilet paper, 1 or 2 spaces back
2x You haven’t left the house in 3 or 4 days, 3 or 4 spaces forward
2x Hoarders attack you at the supermarket, 3 or 4 spaces back
2x Good news - the infection rate is slowing down, 5 or 6 spaces forward
2x Bad news - the infection rate is rising, 5 or 6 spaces back
2x You did your home workout today, 1 or 2 spaces forward
2x Someone didn’t maintain 2m distance in the supermarket, 2 or 3 spaces back
2x You got infected by the coronavirus, 5 or 6 spaces back
2x You’re going viral on TikTok, 2 or 3 spaces forward

These are 30 assignments which means you’ll have two blank cards left. You can either choose another two assignments or use the cards as back up in case you make a mistake on one (or two) of the other cards.

The board game is now finished! Easy right!?

Play the game

You need pawns and a dice to play the game. You can use all kinds of small objects to use as pawns, even pen caps. We found two little toys and used these as pawns. As we didn’t have a dice, we downloaded an app on our phone.

The rules of the game are simple. First, roll the dice. The number on the dice is how many spaces you have to move forward. You either land on a space with an assignment (i.e. ‘2 spaces forward’), a question mark or a blank space. If you land on a space with an assignment, you fulfill it and that’s the end of the turn. If you land on a question mark, you have to draw a card, fulfill the assignment, and end of turn. If you land on a blank space, it’s the end of your turn. Just repeat this process and have a great time!

We would love to see your creations of the board game. Let us know in the comments below!