Weekly reflections

Linus’s reflection: http://hotfireblags.tumblr.com/post/64395623444/weekly-report

Weekly Report

Goal for this week

The goal for this week was to have a basic prototype for our game, then test it ourselves and until we felt ready so that other people could test it as well. When we first started brainstorming on how we could do the exploration in the game, “Drakborgen” came up and we kind of worked with that. I am a big fan of how games like Drakborgen and Betrayal at the House on the Hill handles exploration with the help of randomized tile based systems, where different tiles have different rooms which affects the game in some way. It adds to replayability so much.

What was achieved?

The board game was ready for testing by other groups by this Wednesday already (2013-10-16). Other groups got to try it out and played with other play styles than we did, so it was easier to see some flaws which we can improve upon. I also got try some other groups games at the same time.

How was it achieved?

My group and I spent a long time one day discussing the game while testing it. After one test we discussed how to come closer to our aesthetic and what mechanics we could add to change the dynamic. Then we iterated and repeated this process until we felt that we had a strong foundation, which we could let others test. We agreed to meet up with other groups the next Friday so that we could easily test systems form other groups and give feedback.

Rasmus’s reflection:  http://rasmusbjorling.wordpress.com/2013/10/18/week-42-review/

Week 42 review

This week we made our first prototype of our game. We focused heavily on or two goals; to have an interesting exploring mechanic and to generate a race for resources between players.

Originally we had an idea that was very focused around a cave. This week however we scaled most of that back in order to get base level systems we can test on their own merit. This has made our system much more modular, the theme of exploring as part of a race for resources can be used in many settings other than mining a cave. One example we imagine is the colonialism era where the European superpowers competed through exploration for the rights to various resources. You could also have completely fictional settings if you imagine the resource-race aspect of Star Craft or Heroes of Might and Magic singled out.

Having the first prototype feature only the necessary elements; we can now test and polish so that these elements become more powerful and stable if we for example want to go on to build a cave-based game using our system.

We do still have much testing and revising to do though, as our first testing session showed us that the sabotaging features of our game works poorly. Sabotaging in the game is basically just a drain at this point both for the player performing the sabotage and for the subject they attack. This lead to our testers feeling that the optimal way to play the game was to avoid player interaction altogether and focus on exploring your own corner.

This, of course, is unfortunate. What we really want in the game I feel is a curve looking somewhat like the one in Settlers, where the players experience steady growth towards the goal of winning the game. This growth, once there, cannot be removed, but players will use part of their resources to increment their own progress towards the goal and part of their resources to slow down other player’s progress. Getting this balance right is incredibly important. You don’t want your game to end up in a look down the way we felt abduction tended to do, and at the same time you don’t want the players to feel their is no meaningful interaction between players to be had in the game.

So to recap; we have much work to do, but I think we have a good foundation to work from.

Henrik’s reflection: http://henrikandersson89.wordpress.com/2013/10/17/welcome-to-the-week-of-hell/

Welcome to the week of hell

This week has almost come to an end. I meant to write in the beginning of the week but I have not had time to do so. This week has been the start of hell. It started with us having our assignment in advanced game design to create a board game and getting our assignment in Serious Game. And guess what, it is to create a board game! Only that we only have two week to complete this assignment. In the upcoming weeks I have to write a postmortem and design document in advanced game design and a postmortem for serious games while having enough time to work with my two groups and creating the board games. Welcome to hell.

One of my individual goals for this week was to start blogging more. I cannot say that I have completed this goal and I only have myself to blame. I have prioritized working before writing.

To actually talk about the work I have done this week; in advanced game design I have worked in my group to get a prototype that we could have other groups test at the end of the week. We did some solid work on Wednesday and we got our game working. Something that went really well was our prototyping; we built small and expanded with a system at a time. When we got all our units into the game we felt that it was playable but it will still need a lot of tuning. Our saboteur unit feel very out of place and does not impact the game that much which we need to solve. We also have no way of lowering other players points so if one gets close to winning the other players cannot catch up. We have thought about adding stealing to the game but we felt that we should wait with adding until the other groups have tested our game.

In serious games we have prototyped and found a game that we think will be interesting and serve the purpose of the course. We chose to research and create a game about the problematic about overfishing. I think that our solution will show the problem in a fun way. The game works like this; there are three boxes that represent oxygen level, algae level and fish level. One player plays as the health inspection and his / hers job is to keep the oxygen and algae level down and fish level up. The other player plays as a fisherman, his / hers only job is to catch as many fish as possible. The game is divided into the seasons of a year and during one season the players will try to pass laws that work in their favor. To pass these the players have lobby points. They each try to pass one bill at the time and the person that bets the most lobby points on a bill, pass his / hers law. The bill then plays during the different seasons.

I think I have managed to sum up my work for this week. Hopefully the text has some structure and decent grammar. I really have no clue how to end this wall of text so I am going to end it right now.

Anders’s reflection: http://schoolwaffle.tumblr.com/post/64478659542/week-42

Week 42

Our goal this week was to create a basic playable prototype of the game, which we could then flesh out as we playtested it within the group. We started with just the movement and exploration systems. When we felt that worked well, we moved on to including resource pools, barricades and so on.

We’ve decided to not design the game around a theme (cave exploration is what we had in mind at first), because we think it would be bad for the design process, i.e. that design decisions would be made based on what best fits the theme rather than what’s best for the actual gameplay.

One thing that’s changed since my last blog post is that there’s two different units now; the worker and the saboteur. Players can use their saboteurs to incapacitate the other players’ mining stations, destroy barricades and blow up rooms.
However, according to our playtesting classmates, trying to sabotage each other isn’t as benificial as we wanted it to be; it basically just drains resources for both parties, while the other players can safely gather resources in their own corner and win.
This is something that’s important to improve. Sabotaging each other should be the key to winning the game, not slowing it down

Tobias’s reflection: http://tobkar05.wordpress.com/2013/10/17/another-board-game/

Another Board Game

Our assignment was to make our own board game however we wanted and use the mechanics and systems that we would like to use.
I have been sick lately so I have not been able to partake in all the meetings and events for our group. I took part though in the beginning of the project and I could partake in making the base for our board game, Though in the end I heard that it got changed a lot and it doesn’t have that much left of our original concept idea.

I feel that I would have wanted to be able to partake in making of the game more because I feel that I didn’t really contribute that much. But I guess it couldn’t be helped since I was sick.

We decided to make a game a bit based on the board game ”Drakborgen” it had an interesting play style where you explored the dungeons for treasures and competed for getting the biggest treasure and survive.

Our game would be somewhat played out as if everything took place in a mine while the players would be looking for treasures. it would not really be about killing each other or anything like that, but you would still compete against each other for getting the biggest treasure.

Anyway, interestingly enough when I heard from the others they said that the exploration system was really not a big thing in our game in the end, even though it seemed that it would be our main focus in our game. I believe that it wasn’t so exciting anymore to go into a new room because of that in ”Drakborgen” when you entered a new room you feared what you would find on the other side, since there were enemies everywhere, new pathways, traps and etc… But in our game we only took the random room and threw away everything else that was exciting with the exploration system. And you could easily make new paths through walls and make your own way through so no one would get stuck, but at the same time it came at the cost of that the exploration and finding your own path became completely nullified.
[Edit]

I did get a chance to play the game and I think that the game has some flaws.
The games goal is to collect up to 20 points and then you win. And you start of with 3 points, points can be used as a currency for buying workers or saboteurs, a worker costs 4 while a saboteur cost 2. you really only need workers to complete the game and you can still win easily or even better for not buying saboteurs. You collect points by either finding a treasure which gives 4 points only one time, find a mineshaft where you can spend 3 points to build some sort of mining facility which can make you collect 1 more point each turn, you already get 1 point automatically each turn so after you have one mine or more you gather points faster. Though you can win the game by doing nothing and just explore with the worker you start of with… finding treasures and collect points while everyone else would be wasting their points on stuff that will in almost in no way hinder you.

Another bad thing is that all the players are working their way away from everyone else, there is no benefit from players interacting with each other.