The Beach Safety Board Game

A board game that offers a unique experience of playing and learning about beach safety at home or on the beach.

This project covered the entire journey of the design, development and production of a board game that aimed at encouraging children and families to learn about the danger of the sea and how to keep safe at the beach in a tactile and engaging way.

The RNLI was identified as a appropriate charitable institution that would align with the purpose of the board game.

Initial designs were based around a scaled beach-modelling kit to provide children with a role-playing experience, however after further primary and secondary research; conducting interviews with RNLI crew members and lifeguards; and honing in on the target user, the project grew into a design concept of a beach safety board game.

Research into gameplay and board game mechanics helped focus on a family-friendly game design based around collecting lifebuoys and saving characters in various scenarios that the RNLI would encounter in real life. Game instructions, Question cards, lifeboat and lifebuoy game pieces, a lifeboat station base and a game towel were all produced for the final product concept.