Battleship Display Board

This rendition of life sized battleship requires players to throw a ball into the correct boxes which can’t be seen by the participants from their standpoint. This requires some form of a visual feedback system to alert players if they hit a box, and if so, where. The classic Battleship game’s front board is a simple grid with lettering down the y-axis and numbers across the top x-axis.

For this sketch model, I hoped to recreate the board in a larger size with light signals corresponding to the box that was hit. I followed a similar color scheme to the game when determining certain design choices for the model. The main backing board was made with black foam core and the grid with pink foam spray painted a deep aquatic blue, sticking with the nautical theme. Pink foam was used to give the model more depth and provide housing and a physical substrate for some of the other components.

To partition the grid, I had first tried to create a black overlay with another sheet of black foam core to distinguish each individual square more clearly. However, this created too much visual separation between grid cells, to the point that they looked less like a cohesive group. For the game, players would have to sink ships, which are composed of multiple adjacent cells, so I decided to leave the grid uncovered. Instead, I slit the foam and bend down the edges to give each cell the effect of changing depth at the cell boundaries. Unfortunately, the only piece of pink foam available had large cuts along the entirety of both sides, which causes a little bit of visual confusion of the grid.

The grid was then mounted on the foam core backing plate, and the grid markers were added. These markings do not have significance for the actual game, but provide the players with a source of visual familiarity and help identify which specific squares have been hit.

For this game, certain boxes, randomized or changed per visit, will contain ships that the player must sink by tossing a ball into corresponding bins. In the classic Battleship game, red pegs represent a ship being hit and a white peg means there is not a ship at that location. For this board, red lights will light up if a ship is hit, and a white light will shine if the square is a miss.

The pegs are made from plastic bottles and would be placed on each square (omitted from this sketch model on most squares for economic and time practicality reasons). These pegs will light up: red if a ship is hit and white if the player throws it into a box that is a miss. These peg lights will blink three times when the corresponding box is hit, and then remain lit afterwards.

The goals are displayed on the right side of the board, showing how many contiguous boxes each battleship that must be sunk takes up. Two ships take up two boxes and one ship takes up three. These could even light up to help tell the players which parts of ships are hit and which are remaining. Once all seven (total number can be adjusted) correct boxes are hit, the game is won. Alternatively, if the room has a star system, the number of boxes hit within the limit could determine the player’s star rating for that room.