Game Studies- Projects
Week 3
Presented ideas of our games. My group had 2 ideas for now.
Feedback: Find a purpose. Why are we making this game? Who/what is this game for?
We tested out the games on TTS
Week 4
Showed Mr Charles the development of our game idea.
We narrowed it down to 1 idea and had fleshed out some reasoning for why we were making the game as such, and laid it all out on a Miro board.
Feedback:
-think about broader audience or find solid reason for small audience
-find evidence for the stress relief stuff
-find similar games
Week 5
Week 6
Gameplay testing with Mr Charles!
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| Round 1 |
So the first round we played had even odds for all three power ups (block, bridge, reroll) and the way to win was to be the last man standing, After playing through, we felt that the odds for the power ups should be changed as the bridges keep the game going for longer (you lose if you can't continue your line anymore). So instead of 2/6 for each, it now became 2/6 for block, 3/6 bridge and 1/6 reroll. Another thing we decided was that everyone being cut off meant the end of the game but the winner wouldn't be the last person standing, and would rather be the one with the longest line (we later discussed it and decided it should be having crossed the most number of sectors/divisions on the board rather than the actual total number of lines as some people may not want to do so much math! Anyways on to the second round of testing:
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| Round 2 |
We debated quite a bit during this round over the mechanics of using the bridge power up and whether you can use it to cross perpendicular lines (the verdict: you can't) . Today was also the first time we tested the reroll power up, but after round 2 we decided it kind of made gameplay end up shorter as you'd end up with a really long line without any bridge to continue it beyond your space. We also decided to remove reroll entirely in favour of a block remover, so that there is more chance to have room to move. Lastly, we decided to add a few more power up points, and that power up points would be a neutral ground where anyone could cross regardless of whether people had already crossed there before.
Week 7
More testing with Mr Charles!!! Hannah played with some friends recently and I'm planning to do so as well next week. Ok on to the progress:
Things we changed for this round-
Evened out the border of the board. No more squiggly edge
Added more power up spaces
1 extra ring on the grid
Removed "Reroll" power up, replaced it with "Block remover"
Rule changes:
Players can pass over power up spaces
Players can overlap their own lines
You win by covering the most sectors of the board divisions.
This round got pretty exciting and I think part of it is owed to the improvements we made to the powerups. We concluded that gameplay is already pretty smooth and we just need to fine tune some things. I found that while last week we were more focused on debating how to improve the gameplay itself, this week things went a lot smoother and the things we were discussing were more like small details to consider for this to become a finished product. We only played one round, then discussed for nearly and hour!
Here's what we discussed:
The board seems good for now, and we discussed the possibility of having a larger more complex board as a second level or a "hard mode"
Number of powerups available is balanced and fair between the four players. However, the placement is a bit unbalanced and needs to be thought out and evenly spread across the different rings.
We also discussed making the placement customisable as Hannah's feedback from her test with her friends was that having a fixed board may make gameplay predictable and easy to build strategies for if a player were to play many times. However I pointed out that having the added factor of having to build your own board following a set of rules for placements may make the game too tiresome with the lengthy set up and between having so many rules for both the set up and the gameplay itself, so we settled on having a fixed board, but that having the easy and hard versions can keep gameplay at least a bit more exciting.
Another thing is that it doesn't look very clear that you can pass through power up spaces, so the next iteration of the board should have the grid going over the power up spaces rather than under.
The block remover power up addition seemed to aid the players better than the reroll we tested last week was. However, for the time being we don't have any indicator for block removers similar to how we have decals for blocks and for bridges and will try add one in moving forward.
The rules regarding where you can and can't cross or where you can or can't use bridges was still a bit confusing so we're planning to add diagrams for these rules into the rulebook (that we have yet to create).
On that note, we noticed that having the ability to go over your own lines can make the game endless as you could use that as a way out whenever your line hits a dead end, effectively removing any chance of losing, so we'll do away with that as well. No more going over any lines!!! Be it other players' or your own!
The process of having to count the sectors you've covered is both tedious to do and not very fun. We discussed possible scenarios about this, like what it would be like for somebody's line to die very early in the game, and to have to wait for everyone to complete the game before counting it, but we figured that you can just immediately count the sectors as you go or as soon as you die. Mr Charles also suggested having some sort of token or marker that players can take or place around the board once they cross a sector.
Lastly, we had a very long discussion about the theme of the game, and how different themes could apply to different difficulties, how different terminology for pieces and powerups could be used for different themes, and such. However, Hannah suggested that we leave the board theme as a blank slate, so each group of players can come up with their own themes as they go, based on the observation that all of us testing it so far saw it as something different. (I saw a donut, Dr Charles saw outer space, etc) . We all agreed on this as it gives room for encouraging more creativity with the players.
Week 8
This week was mid term break, so I tested the game with some friends. I got 5 of them to join in (4 played the first round, then 1 person left and was replaced by another friend) so it was very interesting to just sit there and watch them play!
None of my friends have tabletop sim! So I had to get creative with the testing. We used this thing called magmastudio for the board - basically online multiplayer photoshop, and for the dice we used a discord dice bot.
The feedback I got from them was mainly that it was a bit confusing to have to go back and forth to refer to what dice roll was what power up. Some of them also asked about the game not having a theme but they also liked that since it was themeless they could doodle on the board? I didn't prompt them to start doodling btw. They did that all on their own.
Week 9
Our third test with Mr Charles:
Things we changed:
Powerup placement made more balanced
Powerup list added directly on the board
Block remover powerup now has it's own decal.
We didn't have that much to discuss at this point as the gameplay is more solid - just stuff like figuring out a theme in order for the game to have proper terminology in the rules and instructions. Besides that and the block remover possibly needing to be a different colour, the game is pretty okay right now?
Week 10
Alamak forgot to take a screenshot.
This week's session was joined by Mr Ho Yi Jian from the Tabletop Game Design Association Malaysia (I think that's what it's called) and gave us loads of insight for improving our game.
- First player advantage: Seeing as this game is a matter of completing a circle first before the other players, it's a bit difficult to win if you're say the fourth person in line? Similarly when the first person to complete the revolution does so, if the game immediately ends there it can be unfair to the other players who haven't played during that turn in the sense that if they are also able to complete the revolution, their chance would be lost solely due to the order that the turns go in.
- Waiting time between turns: There should be something players can do to interact with the game when it's not their turn (That's why we kept the game board blank though, so you can doodle on it while waiting) However Mr Yi Jian felt that the doodling was a bit distracting???? So this one confused us a bit.
- Board : First of all we need to work on the board's aesthetic. Second of all, he had a lot of suggestions regarding the grid? For example it could be less uniform, maybe have squiggly lines or something. He also suggested adding more dimension to it if we were to make this a physical game ? And to somehow have 3d elements. One of his ideas was to use random lengths of string rather than drawing and then you use beads or something to construct the bridges... (We discussed this later but we are going to stick to drawing as that was the essence and inspiration for this game all along) Lastly, the placement of the power up spots is still not balanced enough. sigh
Besides that he liked the strategy elements in the game, which is great considering how much time we put into nailing that.
Week 11
Dr Charles gave us this week to figure out everything, so on Monday we discussed some changes to make.
On Friday we're going to test playing the game without dice rolls to move, and everyone moves a set # of spaces to reduce any unfairness from a player rolling a big number in the first or second turn and effectively cutting off another player before the game even gets going.
We also discussed some ideas for revamping the board and decided to make it more colourful.
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| Board V4??? |
Friday playtest:
We played 2 rounds. In the first we decided that playing without the dice makes the game way too predictable and without much variation, so we brought it back later but using a d4 instead of a d6. d4 made it so that there is still some aspect of unpredictability but it's still not too much that the first player advantage is a drastic issue.
Another thing was the power up odds. Earlier on when we increased the odds of the bridge to 3/6 (by the way for powerups we are maintaining the d6) , it was long before we decided that power up spaces are a free area you can cross over regardless. That being said, with the power up spaces acting similar
to the bridges as well, just that they are a fixed part of the board, having such high chances of getting a bridge power up is actually not that necessary. In the second round we decided to try 2/6 block, 1/6 bridge, 2/6 block remover, 1/6 free choice. Moving forward we may remove the free choice and rather have rolling a 6 being getting no powerup at all.
Lastly, the board aesthetic and power up placement that we've been struggling with all throughout the semester. After the second round, aided by Hannah's friends who we invited to play and observe, we discussed ways this could be fixed.
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| Discussion time |
We had quite a few ideas, for example a board with rotatable rings, or one that is split into 4 quadrants that are rearrangeable whenever you play, so that the board placement doesn't create the opportunity for returning players to form strategy, but given the amount of time we have remaining and the constraints of tabletop sim we decided against all that in the end. We finally decided to just make the power up placements uniform and symmetrical on the board, and added one more ring to the board as well in order to spread them out more (Previous iterations had 6, then 7 rings. The newest one will have 8). Going back to the matter of the board colour, we realised mid game that having colored rings made it a bit difficult to distinguish player lines and the board lines (mid game I spaced out and when it was my turn I accidentally continued somebody elses line rather than my own cause the colors on the board confused me) so we then decided to colour sectors of the board rather than the grid.
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| Board.. version... 5... |
Week 15
Game Design Document
Reflection
This module was veryyy fun. However, I feel like I enjoyed the exercises more than the project itself haha. I don't know, some part of me just really enjoys observing existing media and applying knowledge learnt to critique the things I know and love, haha. But all in all it was an interesting class. Our game went through so many iterations that I'm a bit tired of it, but I'm still pretty happy with what we came up with. It may be a bit of a niche game but it has a purpose that I believe in.
