Miriam, Ki, Emily, Jess

Relay Race

The Halloween Relay Race incorporates all four of Huizinga’s elements of play: agon, ilinx, alea, and mimicry. It achieves this via three stations: the costume station, the pumpkin toss, and the Death Spin. Two teams with an equal amount of players race against each other in an obstacle course.

The prize—a cauldron on candy—is located at the starting line between the two teams. The game begins with the first player running to the costume station, where there lies a bag of costumes. Player one must choose one article of clothing at random from the bag, and put it on. If at anytime during the race the player loses any part of his or her costume, s/he must retrieve it and put it back on before continuing.

Once fully dressed the player picks up the small pumpkin to begin the pumpkin toss. Player one tries to toss the small pumpkin into the larger pumpkin, located 10 feet from the shooting line. The player must shoot and retrieve the pumpkin until s/he makes the goal.

Once the player succeeds in getting a goal in the pumpkin toss, s/he rolls the dice, determining how many times s/he spins around. S/he spins in place before running across the field to Player Two. Player One removes the costume, and Player Two must dress in that same item before embarking on the race.

Each player repeats this process. The last player on the team will race to the cauldron of candy, declaring their team the winner.

While testing out this game we ran into many problems leading use to refine some areas. We worked out a few obstacle of logistics, for example, we originally wanted to have four groups of four, in a more traditional relay manner, in which each person would complete only one task. However, after testing this method, it would be more entertaing for spectators, and more challenging for the players if all performed each task. Another modification came in the form of costumes. In the beginning the game was set up to use only four articles of clothing. We found that elaborating on the costumes by having groups add on articles of clothing added new dimension to the game and would cause the costume to incur increasing interest as the game progressed. We tried incorporating candy in our pumpkin toss but learned through experience the aerodynamics of pumpkins are preferable to that of candy. In choosing dice we considered many options, including multi sided dice, as well as simply choosing numbers out of a hat. We settled on using two regular dice as we saw them as the least confusing option. Originally we were thinking along the lines of a normal relay race and decided to expand on a Halloween theme. This expansion included the incorporation of pumpkins, candy and costumes. In addition the game was designed four different stations to include all four of Huizinga’s principles, but decided to merge two of the principles into one during our Death Spin obstacle. During our testing of the pumpkin toss we experimented with different ranges between the tosser and the goal. Staring out we tried ranges between 20ft. 15ft., 5ft, and 10ft. Eventually we settled on a 10ft. distance as it seemed the most feasible while still keeping the element of challenge. Our test runs of the game proved extremely helpful in making final decisions about our game and seeing how our ideas played out.