Concept 5
In the light of all of this, we made a decision to scrap all progress we made in create a game. I believe this was a good decision and our previous concepts had a lot of baggage and all of us just did not want anything to do with them any longer. To help in the brainstorming process, we decided to list out why we felt that previous board game that we played felt like they were so much fun. We also agreed to stay away from the previous mechanics we used like simultaneous selection and player elimination. We used Carcasonne, King of Tokyo and others as examples and found four reasons why we thought that these games were fun. First, there was always a way to win. Second, there was strategy involved. Third, taking risks had equal rewards and lastly, we always had decisions to make. Checking back with our previous game concepts, we realized that none of them fulfilled any of our requirements. Hence, we decided to scrap the game concepts we made before and started anew. So, after a fresh start, Ryan suggested we look through a list of board game mechanics and pick up one each and see if we could make some core gameplay functions out of it. We discussed back and forth and I suggested a game involving a student vs teacher setting. Based of the setting, we sat down and discussed what core gameplay mechanics we wanted to implement. Eventually, we decided to use a card game to simulate a ‘cheating in a test’ situation. The cards were all inspired by what all of us would imagine someone cheating would try and do so we decided to create cards to simulate this. We also balanced the points based on how risky a plan would be in real life. The game would run for 6 rounds. The first 4 would be pre-test and the last 2 would be test rounds. The points gained from flipping cards would differ based on the phase. We got inspiration to implement this mechanic as some things you do before a test may not be acceptable during a test. On the Student phase, they would work together to create conditions to cheat. They would then place 3 cards face down and the Teacher would flip them. For flipping cards, Ryan and I decided to create a energy for teachers to use their cards,So, when they flipped cards, the teacher would gain suspicion, which could be used to use his own power cards. This was to give the teachers some strategic choice instead of just flipping cards. This concept also faced some problems. For our initial version, the Teacher only had one flip per turn and if he had a flip that did not give him much information in the first few rounds, he would not have enough information to be able to deduce the plans of the students. So, to counteract this, we decided to have two flips in the first round followed by two flips only if the Teacher gained points from the first flip. Other problems we faced included the Teacher winning by points even if the Student managed to get a condition or the Student being unable to set a condition by the time the test phase started. Conversely, the Students could somehow win even without any conditions just because the Teacher flipped too many safe cards. I encountered this while play-testing as the Teacher, so I gave some suggestions to try to make both parties satisfied. Eventually, to counteract both of these, we made it so if cards such as Phone or Notes made it through undetected by the Teacher during the test phase, the Student would gain points. If not, the Teacher would gain points. The point of this feature was to make it so that there would also be a way to win, which was one of our criteria for what made a game feel fun. We also had to balance some of the Teacher cards as the Confiscate cards were initially only 2 suspicion to play as I found while playing as the Teacher that as certain cards are of higher quantity, this naturally makes it more worth it to use it on that. So, we decided to change the cost based on the number of cards in the deck to make it a larger commitment to remove the higher quantity cards in the deck. Conclusion Using our 4 requirements as a guideline to conceptualize and balance the game was a great help towards creating the game. Admittedly, improvements still can be made to the game such as making the early game more complex as currently it is just a matter of flipping the card and getting the information to make the actual strategic decisions. As time goes on, hopefully I will remember all the concepts I learned and implemented in this assignment for future projects.
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Concept 4
Therefore, we decided to change the game into a 1v1 card game. How this game ran was that players would draw 4 cards at the start of the round and you could choose to attack, defend or support with your cards. Attacking still used the simultaneous selection and type effectiveness to deal damage. Having a card on defense allowed you to swap out with the attacking cards in case you did not like the match up. Support allowed you to use the card for more utility, such as drawing cards and damage mitigation. For this concept, I mainly tried to balance the various effects as well as give my input while play-testing and an issues that me and the rest of my team found was hand management. We soon found that to be a big problem as there was not much way to refill your hand unless you found one of the draw cards. Basically, the game was just a race to see who would lose first by exhausting their hand. We tried various measures to counteract this such as the defender of an attack would take their card back while the attacker would discard or variants of this such as the defender and attacker would discard their initial cards and draw a new card. However, these solutions also opened up new problems. In the case of the defender keeping their card after getting attacked, if the defense was an Elder Dragon, the strongest card in the game, the defender would just keep spamming that card in defense. Other options we explored included creating a tier system of dragons (lesser, normal, greater). The different tiers of dragons would also have stronger support effects while having stronger attacks. However, I feel that the problem with this option was that the lesser dragons felt really bad to draw which also brought about balancing problems and it also did not change the problem with the hand running out. We also tried an evolution system where elements could be combined to created stronger elements but we ran into problems with type effectiveness and it also did not really feel like it could be used in the game while play-testing. We also faced problems with the defense system. During play-testing, players would just keep their cards in their hand for the defense against an attack and not place it down for defense. When asked why, they said if the defense card was going to die, it was more worth it to play it from your hand and get it back after defense rather than use the place down defense and lose the card entirely. Eventually, we even had to scrap the defense feature all together. Similar to all of us our previous concepts, the game felt like it was extremely hard to make it feel fun and strategy as well as balance it so that nothing felt overpowered. To slow down the game, Ryan also suggested that we try to use a charge mana system where you can spend a card to charge a mana which allowed you to play a card so you had to balance between charging your mana and attacking/using utility. At first, we had element specific mana, so if you charged mana with a lightning card, you had one lightning mana to play a lightning card. Later on, we changed it to all-purpose mana as the elemental mana felt restricting. However, in the end, the mana system did not bring much strategic elements to the game as there was no reason not to charge at least one mana a turn. Overall, one big problem we also faced was that the game just did not feel fun. There was already not much strategy involved as it felt like just putting down cards to fill out the turn instead of thinking of cool ways to outsmart the opponent. The main reason we felt like this while play-testing was that the dragons did not really feel differentiated from each other so it just felt like you were doing the same thing over and over again which made the game not feel fun and instead made it feel like a boring game. At the end of it all, the game just felt like putting down cards till your hand was empty and then if your opponent somehow manages to draw a card draw, it gave a feeling of 'I guess I lose' and that you could not really do much to stop it. Concept 3
Our 3rd concept was to still use the dragon pick up system but instead try to create different effects for different dragons so there was incentive to go to different dragons. Ryan, Austin and I thought of the concept and we decided to go for elemental dragons as a theme and we implemented a type effectiveness system similar to rock, paper, scissors. In a challenge, both players would reveal a card simultaneously and if your card was effective against the enemy dragon's type you would deal more damage. For movement, The two action points still applied as we wanted to create meaningful decisions. Now you could play certain dragons, which cost one action point to play. The elemental dragons would be the 'combat' dragons and we also had support dragons that were more utility based, of which we placed some effects on them. For example, we had a dragon were players could have a extra movement point on use and another that could heal the player's health. For this version, my main contributions were brainstorming the elemental dragon idea with my teammates as well as thinking of the various elemental and support dragons that would fill the game. During our playtests for this version, we were given feedback that a board did not really feel necessary as it did not add much strategic elements. Also, we had a retaliation mechanic, so if you got attacked, you would hit back for a certain amount of damage based on how effective your type was. However, this caused a problem where it did not feel worth it to attack another player as at certain times you would take equal amounts of damage. So, we decided to adapt the game into a card game while keeping a lot of the concepts that we were able to think of initially while brainstorming for this concept. Concept 2
After our first concept did not pan out, one of my team members, Gi Kei, suggested a game that involved capturing different tiers of dragons and getting to a high tier as fast as possible. This concept involved a 12 by 12 board with cards depicting tiered dragon card being cast out face down randomly at the start of our game by the players. Players would start at the corners of the board and movement would be done by 2 dice. The first dice, a pyramid dice, would denote movement and the second dice, which was a normal 6-sided dice, would denote the value. Players could also challenge other players within a certain radius of themselves and whoever had the higher tiered dragon would lose that dragon and be sent to a corner of their choosing. The way to win this version was to capture the high tier dragon in the centre by being on its tiles for a certain amount of turns of having the highest tier until our deck of action cards ran out. For this version, I was mostly just tried to give ideas and build off the concepts made by my teammates as most of the concept for the movement and core game play was done by my other teammates. This time, we did play test. However, we soon ran into an immediate problem in that the movement was too random. Players would just end up in a corner as the random direction and value would just cause them to run in circles. This cause players to never venture out of their corners which cause problems for how the game ran. Furthermore, if they lost a challenge, they would just end up back in another corner, which made for a frustrating experience. Other problems that we found was that the dragons being face down did not bring any strategy as you had no idea what you were moving towards. Afterwards, we reverted to an action point system of movement where moving cost 1 point and picking up a dragon would cost 1 point. However, this too had problems as there was not much strategy to game. There was no reason not to move towards a dragon to pick it up so players would just keep going towards the next dragon. The feeling it invoked was a "I guess I'll go there" so we decided to change the concept again. Concept 1 The process of designing our GPN game was a long and arduous one and all our different prototypes were different in one way or another. To start, our first idea was an RPG like board game. The objective of the game was to eliminate all other players or stay on a 2X2 tile for a certain amount of turns. The game would be played on a 12x12 board. During a turn, you had two action points which you could do for various things such as moving to another tile or claiming the various treasures that were littered around the map. These treasures would contain various items like a legendary sword that dealt a lot of damage at the cost of movement or a bow that increased your range and attack. Basically, we would design items that would amplify a certain play style while it would reduce the effectiveness of another play style as well as to provide an incentive to players to initiate combat. The map would also contain a merchant which you could upgrade your stats at set locations. I tried to brainstorm of various items that could fill the treasures as well as work out how to balance range and damage of the weapons. However, we still were met with problems. For example, we had the bow item that gave a lot of range but because of how range worked, the bow would end up covering 1/4th of the map. This also created issues with kiting because how the range system worked meant that the range was exponential. This made it hard for me to try and balance the range as well as the other weapons. Eventually, we fixed this by tweaking some of the values. However, the game still felt empty so we decided to add classes which would allow players to play different styles based of their chosen class. However, balancing their perks in addition to the upgrades for the merchants was quite a challenge, especially for our Archer Class as range would keep on increasing exponentially. We were also unable to find a balanced location to place the merchant. If we placed a merchant in the four corners, we felt it was too easy to get to the merchant while placing it further made the merchant feel not very worth it as it placed the player at risk while not gaining much. However, in the end, we decided to drop this concept as we were having a lot of problems balancing the various items and how the class would interact with each other. Admittedly, we did not play test this version so it could have been a interesting concept given some tweaks in the right direction but I felt that the game also did not really fit the theme of school as although we could create a setting that would set it in a school environment, other settings that did not involve a school could also work with this game. However, the main reason we dropped this concept was still because balancing felt like a nightmare. https://youtu.be/DqJkABxZFyE
The above link links to our GPN assignment 1 Video Pitch I have played many different types of board games with different mechanics. I have played Carcasonne which uses area control and worker placement. I have also played Mafia and Avalon which uses hidden role as well as Monopoly which uses roll and move. I have not played any games that use pick up and deliver. I enjoy playing hidden role games as well as area control. For hidden role, I like being in the 'traitor' role so that I can try and mess with other people's attempts to win the game as well as be able to trick them as to what role I am. In a normal role, you are constantly looking out for any discrepancies so that you can identify the 'traitors' and when you are able to identify them, it makes for a fun mechanic.
For area control games, I like it as you have to plan how to take over certain areas while competing with other players. This type of game may have some luck involved but overall I find it to be a fun mechanic to play with as you are constantly vying for control with other players Mechanics that I dislike include abstract strategy. Generally, I find myself to be a slow learner and abstract strategy is hard to play as a first time player and you have to be more experienced to be able to play at a certain level. When playing chess, a game that uses abstract strategy, I find myself aimlessly moving pieces around. Furthermore, having no theme around a game can get dry as it might feel like there is no objective in the game. The two board games we played during the lesson are King of Tokyo and Carcassonne.
Firstly, King of Tokyo is a board game where you control a monster. The aim of the game is to kill all other monsters or reach 20 victory points, which are gained by staying in Tokyo, getting points from the dice or abilities from cards which are gained by spending energy which is gained by dice throws. You can attack other monsters by getting attack points from dice throws and you attack all others while in Tokyo. Health can be gained back from dice throws but if you are in Tokyo, you cannot heal. This game was pretty fun as you had to balance between staying in Tokyo to get points and damage at the cost of your own health. So, you had to find a good balance between getting points or dealing damage and staying alive. Although using dice throws does need some luck, overall, it was a fun game to play. The second game we played was Carcasonne. It is a map building board game where each turn everyone draws a tile and extend the map. The tile can only be placed to continue the illustration. Depending on the feature in the illustration, you can put markers which are known as 'meeples' to take control of that feature. During the course of the game, if you are able to complete a feature, you can take back your meeple and gain points for completing the feature. Once all tiles are placed, the incomplete features in your control are counted and based on their value, a last burst of points is given to everyone depending on how much you control. The winner is the one with the most points. This game had a good balance of strategy and luck. You had to get somewhat lucky with your tile draws but you had to make sure you did not over commit to features that are not likely to be complete which would keep your 'meeple' stuck. You also had to balance between complete features now or waiting till end game to get the last burst of points. Although not being able to complete a feature by one tile felt frustrating, overall, this game was a fun experience. From the list, the two mechanics I enjoy are mouse dexterity and protect a target. Mouse dexterity is actually quite a difficult mechanic to get good at, so when your mouse movements are on point, it feels good to be able to pull it off. Some games which incorporate mouse movements are League of Legends and PUBG.
Protect the target is usually in games where you face a large amount of enemies and you have to go against all odds to beat them back. It can get very hectic, so once you successfully complete the objective, a feeling of relief washes over you and you are ready to get back into it. Some games I play that use this mechanic include Left 4 Dead as well as custom gamemodes of Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne The mechanics I dislike are disinformation and being timed. I dislike disinformation as I am very bad and keeping my cool when trying to present false information or bluff an opponent. Games that use disinformation are Hearthstone or party games like Mafia. The other mechanic I dislike is being timed. As said before, I am quite bad at keeping cool in a high pressure situation so more often than not I will panic while being in a timed situation. Some games which use this mechanic are Mario games . The random mechanics are got were Push Mole Down, Moles Comes Up, Timed and Repeat Pattern. A game idea that could use this mechanic an rhythm game where you have a time limit to press a certain rhythm and with each successful attempt the rhythm changes or becomes faster and the objective of the game is to have as many successful attempts as possible |
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August 2018
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