The Rumble Board game teaches children between the ages of 9 -12 to build structures that can handle weight and natural disasters! Players aim to build that tallest structure that will survive the final Rumble earthquake.
Rumble was developed by a team of 6 MIT Engineers and 2 RISD Designers. Our goal was to create an educational activity that would help expose children to STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math) careers. We strove to develop a game that would not only teach children the fundamentals of physics, architecture, and engineering, but would also introduce them to new and exciting ways of building and using their creativity. Together, our team developed the mechanics, game play, branding, and prototyping. Our first step was to develop our initial test prototype, which we tested with several children between the ages of 9-12.
Rumble's first prototype had hand cranked cams that created a the "eathquake" motion of the game. The second prototype had battery powered cam motors that created either a high or low "earthquake".
Below you can see a video of the vibrations created by the cam motors, note structures not attached to board in this video.
Rumble comes with the earthquake board, sand timer, building pieces, cards, and specialty pieces such as weights and flood pieces. Youngest player starts by picking the first card in the deck. The cards tell players what to do, for example:
Add Pieces ( 1- 4): Players can add pieces to their structure to fortify or increase height.
Fire Cards: You lose a certain amount of pieces due to a fire in your structure
Flood Cards: A portion of the board has been flooded, meaning your structure can't be built in that area
Weight Cards: Add weight to your strucuture, this can be good or bad
Engineer Card: You have a certain amount of time to fix or modify a portion of your structure.
Rumble Card: Players have to turn on the Earthquake feature of the game!
Full Game, with game instructions and parts.
