Board Game: The Four Symbols - 四象

The Four Symbols is the first game I ever created, which has been playtested several times among my undergraduate classmates.

Most of the arts of the board game has been done, but some characters on Action Cards which I originally drew as fanart and personal practice still need rework.

《四象》是我个人创作的第一款游戏，其在我本科时期经历过两次playtest。

该桌游的绝大部分美术已经完成，但部分美术仍需要进行替换或修改，因行动卡中的几个角色在开始时是被我当作同人练习来绘制的。

Inspirations and Design Ideas

I created this board game for a very simple reason: to introduce my friends and classmates about board games.

In order to arouse their interest, the elements that make up this board game should combine something they are familiar with, and the rules of the game should be relatively easy to understand and learn. So I decided to design the game with the well-known Chinese legend story "Four Symbols" and Taoist culture.

灵感来源与设计思路

我创作这款桌游的初衷非常简单：向好友和同学安利桌游。

为了激起他们的兴趣，构成这款桌游的元素最好能结合他们熟悉的东西，并且游戏规则相对易懂，容易上手。于是最后，我决定围绕在中国人尽皆知的神话“四象”和道家文化来设计它。

About Research

Having decided that this board game is related to the "Four Symbols" and Taoism, I naturally recalled an old saying:"The Limitless (Wuji) produces the Absolute (Taiji)... The four symbols act on the eight trigrams."

In order to further incorporate these elements into the game, I thought of a few ways to design and embody them in the types, names, and shapes of the cards.

These researches are shown in the diagram above.

资料调查与收集

确定了桌游与“四象”和道法有关，我自然而然地想起一句古话：“无极生太极，太极生两仪，两仪生四象，四象生八卦”。

为了进一步融合这些元素到游戏中，我想了一些方法并将它们最后设计并体现在卡片的种类、命名或是外形设计上。这些在配图中都有展现。