CAGD 170

Race to the White House

During the production of this game I was in group 12. The name of our game is Race to the White House. Race to the White House is a competitive multiplayer game where players will start off as a low-end politician and work their way up to becoming president. This game is met to be played with two to four players. The targeted audience for this game are 18 year and up, but anyone can play.

            In the beginning of the development, the first issue we ran into was how we wanted the board to look like. We decided on making a board similar to the board in the game Monopoly. After play testing the first prototype we noticed another issue. This game was purely luck based. The initial prototype of the game was only the board. So, the only mechanic the player had was rolling the die to move around. The way we were able to fix this issue was by making the spots on the board more complex. This was accomplished with my partner’s idea of adding the mechanic of buying electoral votes from states.

            But we also wanted another strategic feature in the game. After some discussion, we deiced to add cards to the game. I was then task to make some of the cards we were going to use. At first we were debating if the players should have the cards at the start of the game or if they should have to go around the board and collect them. We decided to combine these two ideas because we did not want luck to but the only factor for the player to be able to use the cards. We decided to give the players some cards in the beginning of the game, but also have spots on the board that allowed the players to collect more cards.

            Our other attempt of adding more action in the game was by adding “Random Cards”. The goal of these cards was to make scenarios where it could have a positive or negative affect on the players. These cards also compliment the other cards we made because they can help counter the negative effects. We noticed that with these mechanics that we added, our other playtests went better than expected. The players enjoyed the idea of purchasing electoral states and the random cards helped make the game more fun the players.

            What I would change in future developments would most likely be the way I share my ideas. During this development process, I found myself trying to come up with ideas that my partner would like and that matched his idea of the game. I also should try to come up with more complex ideas. I noticed that I was coming up with ideas that I thought would be easy to make and complete so that we wouldn’t have to stress too much. I think that I should of tried to come up with an idea that would be complex enough that it would be interesting, but at the same time within our ability to complete it.

            Throughout the development process for our game Race to the White House, I enjoyed working with my partner and seeing people playtest our game. At first, I didn’t expect people to really like our game. But after seeing our playtesters reactions and hearing their feedback I saw that people did enjoy playing our game. Now I feel that our game is enjoyable for people to play. But I think if I worked harder with my partner and if we had more communication this game could have potential been a lot better.

Zika Island: Mosquito Madness 2 - “Day of Dysentery” Act III The Prequel

            During this unit, I was in group 6 and the name of our game was Zika Island: Mosquito Madness 2 - “Day of Dysentery” Act III The Prequel. In this game the CDC is tasked a job to eliminate the Zika swarms while surviving long enough to eliminate the mosquito. The target audience for this game are people from the age of 20 to 30.

            During the process of making this game we have encountered a few problems. One problem that occurred was with our communication. We did not meet up much outside of class and the discussions we had during class sometimes got misunderstood leading both of us to have a different understanding of the games rules and mechanics. This problem made some of our rules confusing to the players but after we had discussed what the rules and mechanics should be we quickly fixed the issues that had occurred.

            For our first playtest we had a problem with the pieces we used for the items. During the first playtest we used small pieces of sticky notes and we quickly noticed that it took a long time to set up. We also noticed that the playtesters were annoyed when trying the move their pieces around the board trying not to obstruct the sticky notes on the board. The way we went about fixing this was by changing the materials we used for the pieces. We changed the pieces to a flat marble type of material. After making this change we noticed the time to set up was extremely faster and that the players didn’t have any trouble picking up the items and moving their pieces.

            One of the biggest problems we found throughout our playtests was that the game took a long time to finish. We did not think this was a real issue because the players were enjoying the game but we went over the 15-minute time limit that we were supposed to be following. Each playtest of our game took around 45 minutes. We did not get to implement a change to this but we were planning on making the game board shorter and adjusting the price values and item ratios so the game would not take as long as it did.

            For future game developments, I plan on having more communication with my partner. I noticed this was the issue with not only this game development but with the previous game developments I had. I would mostly only talk to my partners during class and had some messages outside of class. But the messages outside of class was mostly about the materials we needed and assignment questions. We never really had any development done outside of class and I believe if we had our games would have been a better success.

            Also for future developments I would like to try to do something more unique then what the rest of the class is during. What I noticed from all the games I saw in class was that a lot of the games were very similar to each other with some slight differences here and there. I would like to make a game that stands out from the rest of the class. But this would require me to have to work harder on the assignments, which I have not been during that much with the previous games. I believe if I thought of a game that was unique and that I enjoyed I would work harder on it creating a game that I could be proud of. So in future game development I will try to make a game that I would find unique and that I would consider actually playing outside of class.

Exploration

                 During this unit I was in group 16 and our game name is Exploration. The premise of our game is that the players are explorers trying to reach the big discovery. The way you play the game is by rolling a dice to move your piece, but you need to pay coins to move. If the player runs out of coins, they are sent back to the beginning with a reduced amount of coins. A unique feature of this game is that there are different sides the players can choose to start on and each side has multiple paths to take.

The targeted audience of this game was 15 to 20 year old females interested in science. We decided to stray away from the gender part of the targeted audience because we didn’t want to accidentally offend anyone by making a “game for girls”. The genre we were also targeting were factory simulations. Which we found difficult to find an idea for. We were told that factory simulation was like resource management. This helped us narrow our ideas to fit this genre. And we decided to have our game be focused around managing coins to ether pay for movement or effects from cards.

During our playtesting we noticed some problems that we expected and problems that were the complete opposite of what we thought they would be. The first playtest we had two playtesters and didn’t have any way to get feedback from the players other than observations and asking them questions. During this playtest we noticed that the game was too long short because players would run out of coins to move and would instantly lose. We also noticed that because the coins were so rare and players would only use these coins to move, that the cards we had would never be used because of their high cost. So we changed how many coins it cost to move and reduced the cost of the market cards while increasing the amount of money you received from the dig cards.

The second playtest went better than the first. We had six playtesters and we made feedback forms for our playtesters so we would have a better idea of what went wrong and what actually worked. With the changes we made from the previous playtest we noticed some players thought the game was now too short. Two players thought the game was still too long, but we suspect it was due to the lack of players in that round (which was only two). Another thing we noticed from the feedback forms was that the game needed more challenge. This was most likely happened because one player completely dominated the other players and quickly won. After this playtest we noticed some flaws with the game but the playtesters seemed to enjoy the game still.

The group work on this project wasn’t perfect. My partner did almost all of the work. We would bounce ideas between each other but in the end the game was mostly based on my partner’s ideas with influence from some of my ideas. I feel this happened because of the lack of communication between us. We would rarely talk outside of class so my partner took the initiative and worked on the game outside of class. I think this was one of the reasons our game turned out how it is. I believe the game is good but it could have been better if I attempted to communicate more and helped more with the production of the game. And I will need to try to interact with my partners more to make a good game.

Tree of Life

This unit I was in group 17 and we worked on a game called Tree of Life. In this game there are two players. One player is a commoner while the other is Mother Nature. The goal of this game is for the commoner to reach the Tree of Life as Mother Nature tries to stop the commoner by extending the amount of land. The targeted audience for this game are generally kids ages six and up but it is basically for any who enjoys adventure games.

During the development process of this game we encountered a few problems. The main problem we had was how long we wanted the game to be. This problem became a bigger issue once we started playtesting the game. Initially we thought the game was going to be too long so we reduced the amount of land cards Mother Nature had. But after two groups playtest our game we noticed that the game was extremely shorter than we had thought. To solve this issue we had to add more land cards for Mother Nature.

Another problem we encountered was balance between the commoner and Mother Nature. We noticed that Mother Nature was a lot stronger than the commoner making the game short, uninteresting, and uneventful. We tried to fix this by removing some of the stronger creatures Mother Nature had and gave the commoner stronger weapons. We didn’t get a change to playtest this change but we hope that it fixes this problem.

A problem we had as a group was the explanation of our ideas. Occasionally the ideas shared between each other were misunderstood making some of the game mechanics not flow together well. An example of this is when we had the idea of commoner having some base strength that he could increase to take down the creature Mother Nature used. But instead we ended up having the commoner start off with zero strength so he/she couldn’t pass creatures making the game extremely short and one-sided. So we had to meet again to talk about how we could fix this issue.

The problem that was the most blatant for us was clarity of our rules. We noticed that some playtesters did not fully understand how to play this game. We also had some players who didn’t have much issue understanding the rules but we would like to make the rules easier to understand for all. We simply tried to fix this by adjusting the phrasing of the rules to help make it easier for the players to understand.

Going forward in my development process I would like to change the way I gather data from playtesters. Currently I just observed the players and took some basic notes on their reactions and how they played the game. What I would like to do in the future is to record the players (with their permission) and to make a feedback form so I could get a better understanding on the mindset of the playtesters. I would also like to have better communication with my partner(s) so we could come up with an idea that is both playable but also flows well with the mechanics.

During the development of this game I had an enjoyable time. This assignment help me understand the process of developing a game and helped me better understand why certain games are made a certain way. I also learned how I should playtest future games and what I should look for in player reactions. I believe this assignment was good in helping me understand more about game development and what is needed to make a good game great.