Game Redesign: Pit

This past Spring, the student copywriters and graphic designers of Grand Canyon University (GCU) worked together on a passion project that would challenge them to develop new skills and successfully collaborate as a team. The students chose to focus their time, talent and creativity on redesigning a card game to appeal to a different demographic.

Group one decided upon a trading game called Pit because of a group member’s fond memories of playing the game as a child. Pit is over 100 years old and has had several different redesigns over the years. Sadly, the game design has lost its vintage look in recent years. This group’s mission was to attract a newer audience of players to this historic game but with a twist: Southwest-themed.

Inspired by Arizona’s beauty, this group wanted to share the state’s incredible history and culture through a modern yet vintage design aesthetic. One way they accomplished this was by redesigning the trading cards used in the game. In the original game, cards represented commodities like corn, wheat and coffee. To implement the southwestern theme, this group decided to use the commodities included in Arizona’s five C’s: cotton, cattle, citrus, cacti and climate.

Your new favorite game night is also a fun way to learn more about Arizona’s unique culture. Like they say in the game, “hold on to your britches, things are about to get wild!”