City-building and other territory-building and transport games are among the most popular strategy and simulation games, either on digital or analog platforms. It is also a type of game that is increasingly used for gamification and serious game applications to support simulation and decisionmaking. However, designing games is not easy, especially for non-game experts. We present a method to find game mechanisms for developing analog city-building games (directly or prototypes of digital solutions). We analyzed the most popular city-building and territory modern board games to present a list of mechanisms and their narrative implementation. Planners and game designers can use this practical guide for consultation while developing and testing their game systems, regardless of the complexity they wish to implement in their simulations.

Serious games can be planning support tools to establish collaborative planning processes for urban issues. We proposed a co-design method to adapt and develop analog games inspired by modern board game design traits, reducing the game development time and cost. The stakeholders, invited by Leiria Municipality (Portugal), played two preparatory sequences of the game to collect priorities and concerns that supported the final serious game (budget allocation). The sequence of game sessions and the final analog serious game for the UrbSecurity (Urbact) project delivered support tools for planners and local authorities, allowing them to engage stakeholders and collaborate to plan their city to increase security. There are game design requirements, data collection, and facilitation guidelines and requirements to guarantee future replication. The playability requirements may affect the granularity and accuracy of the simulation. However, achieving the serious game goal of establishing a collaborative planning support tool is still possible.

Although multiple models have been proposed to explain what motivates different players to engage with digital games, the domain of tabletop games have not received the same attention from the research community. This work tries to fill that gap, investigating what drives us to play tabletop games. Based on the existing literature and in conjunction with tabletop game experts, we designed a questionnaire capturing relevant concerns both related to the analog artifact itself as well as to the context of play. Through principal component analysis of the responses from a diverse range of tabletop game hobbyists (N = 229, with an average collection of 99 tabletop games each), we propose a model with 5 dimensions characterizing the main motivations to play tabletop games that explains 80% of the variance of the data: (C)ompetitive interaction, (S)ocial challenge, (S)ensory experience, (I)ntellectual challenge, and (I)maginative experience. We discuss each dimension and compare our results to existing models on play motivations, and propose a 3-component version of our model providing a bridge to a broader interaction model. By understanding why players engage with tabletop games in their physical form, we hope to help the development of hybrid or digital versions of these games.

This research intends to clarify the difference between game mechanisms and mechanics. We propose the reinforcement of game mechanisms as building blocks for game design. After analyzing Board Game Geek (BGG) mechanisms databases and crossing it with the literature review and game examples, we provide a new classification for board game mechanisms. Departing from the Mechanics-Dynamics-Aesthetics (MDA) framework, we propose the Mechanisms, Mechanics, Dynamics, and Experience (MMDE) approach to fit the different concepts of mechanics and mechanisms to analog game systems. These findings should clarify the concept of mechanisms as building blocks for analog game design, which is also useful for hybrid and digital game design.

Board games were reinvented, and the new designs are creating growing interest in consumers. The new games provide alternative options to create serious games and may also inspire gamification designs, suited for engineering education and training. This paper describes the process of testing three modern board games: Steam, Codenames and Just One. The games were adapted to address the curricula of two civil engineering lectures, serving as a first test in order to identify the characteristics of modern board games and how they can be transformed into serious games.