Sprouts: A Board Game for Trust
Role
Designer
Team
Georgia Lyu
Sharon Zhao
Kathy Lin
Timeline
March - May 2025
Skills
Physical Prototyping
Graphic Design
Brainstorming
Context
The game centers on the parent-child relationship, particularly how it evolves when children start to express more independence and emotional depth. Trust is explored in multiple ways:
Self-Trust
Helping children believe in their ability to act, decide, and recover from setbacks.
Mutual Trust
Encouraging parents and children to respect and understand each other’s perspectives and needs.
Situational Trust
Co-navigating challenges with empathy, openness, and shared values.
Research
Helped determine the appropriate age group to focus on 9–12 years, when children are in the Industry vs. Inferiority stage.
Provided the psychological foundation for the three core qualities—autonomy, competence, relatedness
Problem Area
Children between 9–12 often experience self-doubt, especially when navigating peer pressure, performance anxiety, or moments of perceived failure. Meanwhile, parents often over-correct or shield their children from difficult emotions, unintentionally undermining their autonomy and confidence.
The game addresses this tension by offering a safe space to explore everyday dilemmas, helping children reflect, and giving parents tools to support without controlling.
How might we design a game that helps parents and children (ages 9–12) build self-confidence through shared decision-making and reflection?
Experiments
We drew inspiration from other role-playing board games to study their mechanics and identify what might work well for our context. We also mapped out both interior and exterior factors that influence a child’s self-confidence. Using pen and paper, we sketched out early versions of our scenario and reaction cards and ran test plays to observe how players interacted with the system. These low-fidelity tests helped us quickly spot what was engaging, what needed more clarity, and how the choices could better reflect real emotional dynamics.
Final Experience
Gameplay revolves around rolling a dice to move along a nature-inspired map, encountering life scenarios, and making collective decisions using discussion and token voting. Each decision affects three tracked metrics — and the game is only won if all metrics stay above zero by the end. Along the way, players collect special Skill Cards that let them influence outcomes, override decisions, or reflect their personal values.
