“Bliff” is an olfactory board game in which players’ olfaction (sense of smell) is the only sense required for them to advance through the game. Players are given various challenges regarding their sense of smell, and their ability to answer these challenges will be rewarded with certain number of moves.

The design of the board game was inspired by existing traditional board games such as Chinese Checkers and Ludo, based on the facts that these games are already familiar to people in general and its simplicity enables players to play the game without learning many rules. This consideration was also taken because olfactory games are practically new and unfamiliar (thus it requires player’s adaptation), so other game elements should be simple and easy to play.

Bliff is developed as a part of my graduation project/research entitled: “Bliff: Exploring Olfaction Autonomy in Olfactory Board Games” for the MSc Media Technology programme at Leiden University. The project was supervised by Edwin van der Heide and Maki Ueda.

See the documentation of making and testing the olfactory board game here.

ps: Currently I’m developing ‘mini bliff’, a smaller version of Bliff that is easier to carry, thus I can easily introduce the game to novice players. Please contact me if you’d like to try the mini bliff.

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