Rotundi | Annika Heilmann

ROTUNDI was my bachelor project in the winter semester 2020/21. The topic of my bachelor thesis was the reduction of barriers for visually impaired people in analogue games. Based on this, in the practical part of my bachelor assignment, I created ROTUNDI, a game that was designed to be playable by both visually impaired and non-visually impaired people. I first had nine weeks to write my Bachelor's thesis and then another nine weeks to create the practical project.

The objective of the game is to move your own piece four times from your own starting square to the centre square. The centre square must be reached once from each quarter of the board, first from one's own quarter, then from the quarter to the right, then from the quarter to the left and finally from the quarter opposite. Both dice are rolled at the same time, with the six-sided die indicating the steps the player has to take and the four-sided die indicating how far one of the movable rings may be turned.

Here are some photos of the final prototype I submitted for the Bachelor of Arts degree:

The packaging is a big purple box with yellow lettering. In this image, the lid is open to reveal the wooden game board.

The wooden game board is square shaped and divided into quarters marked in the colours black, yellow, green and purple. The board itself consists of eight concentric rings, four of which are rotatable. The individual fields have indentations in which the pieces can be placed. In the centre is a cluster of 16 fields.

A playing piece is placed in each corner on the board, and there are 16 dowels in the middle as collectible pieces. In front of the board are two dice, one six-sided and one four-sided.

A close up the Braille sticker below the letters of the game title on the purple packaging. The letters are yellow with a black outline, the Braille-script is yellow on a clear sticker.

The four game pieces are made from wooden cylinders with different colours and differently shaped tops: The black piece is pyramid-shaped, the purple piece is conical, the yellow piece is cylindrical with a horizontal ridge below the top and the green piece is rounded.

The purple, conical game piece is placed in one of the indentations in its starting area in the corner of the game board. Next to it there is a smaller version of the same piece, which is fixed in place as a guiding point.

Both dice are white with black tactile dots. The six-sided die is made of plastic, the four-sided die is made of wood. It is elongated with pyramid-shaped ends. The other four sides are the ones with the tactile dots.

The game manuar consists of six pages, which are fanned out in the photo. The manual is written in German.

The title "ROTUNDI" is written in capitals, with the Braille version above it.

In my Bachelor's thesis, I developed a checklist of elements to consider in order to avoid barriers for visually impaired people in the development of analogue games. This checklist is available here for download in the original German version and in an English translation:

German

English