Assignment 1 - Designer Diary (Part 5)For the last version of the board game, we decided to start from scratch and needed to rethink of another idea. Since it was difficult to think of a brand new idea, I suggested that we should start by listing out what makes board games fun (more specifically, what made the board games we played fun). Some of the board games we played in previous lessons were King of Tokyo, Love Letter, Nmbr 9, Carcassonne and Unusual Suspects. In the end, we concluded that there all had some similarities in terms of why they were fun. From there, in addition to the feedback we received about our previous games, we created a check with the following elements:
To briefly explain what each element means, Risk-over-Reward means that a decision a player makes may be very risky, but the reward will be of high value (am I willing to take a risk to hopefully get something valuable?) . Strategic Planning means that players are able to strategise and make meaningful decisions that can affect the game. Always a Way to Win means that each player can have a chance to win, and no one person has the obvious advantage at the start of the game. Decision Making means that players should be able to make a decision and not have one option that they will obviously take. When using this check on previous games, we found out that all the past versions of the game did not meet any of our requirements for a fun game and had failed the check. At this point, we felt disappointed yet relieved as the past versions of the game that we thought were fun were actually not fun at all, but we were relieved that we decided to drop the previous idea and create a new game before it was too late. For this game, we started with Ryan's idea of a game that involves Teacher vs Student. Since we all liked games with a mind game element, I provided ideas like a spy being among the players. In the end, After creating the theme of the game, we consulted Dr Oon for some of his opinions of our idea. He gave us some useful tips on how to plan the gameplay (Students rebel against teachers? How do students or teachers win?). Using some of the ideas he gave us, my team decided that the game would involve the students cheating and the teacher catching the students in their act. After the theme was finalised, we decided to make it a card game since we felt that a card game would be the most suitable game type since some of the ideas and part of the theme would not work well on a board. Some of the mechanics of the game include Set Collection, Hand Management and "Take That". In terms of gameplay, Students and Teachers have different cards, and there are 6 total rounds in the game: 4 pre-test rounds and 2 test rounds. Students can play cards that create cheating conditions in the pre-test rounds and can use cards to activate the conditions during the test rounds. On the other hand, the Teacher can flip 1 of the 3 possible cards played by Students in hopes of catching them in their attempt. When he does so, he gains a suspicion point which can be consumed to use a Teacher card (in their hand). Some of the effects of the Teacher cards include "disable all communication with one student" and "confiscate all phones". For the first turn only, Teachers are able to flip 2 out of the 3 cards played. After the first round, if a 'suspicious'/condition card is flipped (for example, a phone is one such card since students are not supposed to use their phones in class), the Teacher gains the number of points stated on the card and is then granted a second flip. By the end of the game, whoever has the most number of points win. While we were playtesting this game, even though it already felt more fun than the previous versions of our game, a few minor issues started to rise, but were eventually solved.
As mentioned earlier, the game already felt more fun than the previous versions. Here are some reasons why (while using the check):
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Assignment 1 - Designer Diary (Part 4)For the forth version of the board game, our team decided to change the type of game, from a board game to a two-player card game. Now, the dragon cards are able to attack, defend and support. In terms of gameplay, players can play up to 2 of these cards in the attack, defend or support position (attacking is last). When a player attacks, elemental effectiveness comes into play again. Similar to the previous version, effective attacks deal double damage and less effective attacks deal half the damage (e.g. when a fire dragon attacks a water dragon, since water is stronger than fire, player who played fire dragon takes more damage while player who played water dragon takes lesser damage). To defend, players can either use a card from their hand or use a dragon in the defence position on their side of the playing field, and a player wins when the other player has 0 health remaining.
Originally, when players defend using a card from their hand, they will lose that card. After playtesting, however, we found out that players will not have enough cards in their hands after a few turns, so we decided that the card will return to the defender's hand after defending. After having a basic idea of the game, we felt that it may be too simple and wanted to add more mechanics to it. This was when I suggested the idea of having an evolution system where two dragon types could combine to become a fusion element (for example, earth and water could fuse to become mud). However, after we tested the game with this fusion system, we noticed that we would see no point in using this system. We then decided to change this system by including tiers (lesser, normal, greater) instead of fusing elements. The lesser dragons are not affected by elemental effectiveness and are not able to damage greater dragons. Greater dragons, on the other hand, are able to be neutral against the Elder dragon. After this (and more playtesting), we added more elements to the game, like adding Light and Dark dragons to the game and using a mana system where players can use a card from their hand to charge up their mana (can only be done once a turn). However, we found out that it depends on whether players are lucky enough to get cards with the same element to use as mana. To fix this, we changed the mana system so that any card can be used as mana (Elder dragon in mana pile is like a "wild card" where it represents all elements), but the mana is discarded when used. To make the game more interesting, we tried to add spell cards (with mana cost) to the game (some examples of these spell cards include "+2 health" and "Destroy one of the enemy's spell cards"). To gain feedback on our game, we brought this game to our class and some of our classmates offered to try out the game. We found out that they did not play any defence cards on the playfield and would only defend by using cards in their hand. When asked why after the game, they said that there was no point in playing any defence cards when they could just defend from their hand (since the card will go back to their hand and will not be discarded). In addition, one of the players got an Elder dragon in their hand and would continuously use it to defend (since the Elder dragon is stronger than most of the other dragons). After the lesson ended, my group stayed behind to continue working on our game (this was 3-4 days before the video pitch was due). While Tristan and Ryan was playtesting the game, this was when I asked them whether the game felt fun as from a spectator's standpoint, it might be interesting at first, but after a while, people may not play it again. This will affect the replayability of the game. They then said that it was not very fun after a while since there is not much strategy to this game. After all, we felt that the only 'strategy' of this game was to continuously charge mana and play cards, and hope that you can deal effective attacks. Also, The spells or support abilities did not feel very impactful at all. This was when we decided to finally scrap this whole idea of dragons and go back to the drawing board. Assignment 1 - Designer Diary (Part 3)For the third version of the board game, we kept the 12x12 board and the theme of dragons, but we chose to add elements to it. This was because the gameplay of ordinary dragons fighting was too plain, therefore to spice things up, elemental dragons were added. I also suggested the implementation of elemental effectiveness so the game is basically a more complex rock-paper-scissors game with the simultaneous and "zero-sum" mechanics.
In terms of movement and combat, we used the Action Point Selection mechanic again since we felt that players would at least be able to strategise where to go to. Similar to the previous version of the game, each player is given some of the elemental dragons at the start of the game to scatter on the board faced up. This ensures that there will be some strategy involved so players can make meaningful decisions. In this game, players now move around to capture elemental dragons to be used to battle other players in a "rock-paper-scissors"-like game. Players can capture a dragon by spending an action point. When players are within a 2 tile range, they can choose to battle. We chose not to force the players to battle anymore as we did not want players to feel forced to battle and wanted to give them that choice. In terms of the actual gameplay, the four elements we implemented are Earth, Fire, Water, and Thunder. To make the game slightly more interesting and fun, an Elder dragon is added. The Elder dragon is stronger and more effective against all elemental dragons, but there will obviously be fewer Elder dragons to balance the game by not having many overpowered cards. As previously mentioned, players carry out combat in a way that is similar to rock-paper-scissors. They will each play a card simultaneously and determine the amount of damage they deal and take. This is when elemental effectiveness comes into play. Similar to rock-paper-scissors (where rock beats scissors, etc), effective attacks deal more damage while less effective attacks deal less damage. In the case of the Elder dragon, it always deals effective damage. Similarly, we brought this version of the game to class and ask for more feedback. After we asked for some feedback, Dr Oon gave some useful feedback again. He also noted some of the game's problems and gave us tips on how to solve these problems. Firstly, it was mentioned that the board needed to be modified. While playtesting, we noticed that the game would take too long simply because of the size of the board. One suggestion was to make the board smaller so players can have more encounters with one another and gameplay will not take as long as with a bigger board. In addition, since the main aim of this game was to capture dragons and fight other players, another suggestion was to remove the board and converted into another kind of game. Secondly, there was no merit in meeting other players to fight. This is because when the attacker is in combat with the defender, there is no "Take that" moment and since the combat is so simple, players do not feel satisfied when in combat. Also, there is some luck involved because of the rock-paper-scissors mechanic, so one player could continue to lose just because of luck (or lack thereof). After taking the feedback by Dr Oon into consideration (including feedback from other classmates), I decided that we actually do not need the board at all and suggested making this game into a card game. Assignment 1 - Designer Diary (Part 2)For the second version of the board game, we decided to keep the theme of "moving around the map" and dragons, but we scrapped the class system. Instead, players will now play as students from Dragon Academy whose aim is to capture dragons and fight other players. Some of the mechanics like Area Movement and Player Elimination still remain. The 12x12 board from the previous version is used again. Instead of an Action Point Selection mechanic, we chose to use 2 dice as movement: 1 die that determines the number of tiles to move and 1 die that determines the direction of movement. The Merchants and legendary cards were removed, and a new system was implemented. Players now capture dragons by moving around the board using the dice and. The dragons have tiers that range from Tier 1 (weakest, most quantity) to Tier 10 (strongest, only one in the centre of the board). At the start of the game, players are given some dragons to scatter randomly on the board faced down. There are now 2 types of combat: combat with dragons and combat with other players. Combat now no longer includes health and damage, but the difference in tiers (more mentioned later).
In order to capture dragons, players will have to stand on a dragon tile for a number of turns to capture it. The number of turns to wait depends on the levels of the dragon and player ( (dragon level - your level) turns to successfully capture the dragon). At the start, players are level 0. After capturing dragons, the highest tier of their captured dragons is their level. If their level is higher than the tier of the dragon tile they are on, they only have to wait 1 turn to capture it. For combat with other players, if a player is within a 1 tile radius of another player, they must fight each other. On the other hand, if players are within a 3 tile radius, they can decide whether or not they want to fight. Of course, there are also issues with this version of the game. When we brought our prototype to class, Dr Oon provided many helpful feedback and tips to help us improve and fix our game. He also pointed out some problems of our game. Firstly, the movement is very luck-based. Originally, the reason why we wanted an Action Point Selection mechanic was because we didn’t want much luck in our game. However, after a team member suggested the use of dice for movement, we decided to stick with this system. After playtesting the game in class, we immediately noticed a huge issue. For the majority of the game, players are staying at their respective corners and in most situations, most of the players will never get the chance to fight. Also, because of this luck-based movement, capturing dragons was also difficult. Personally, while playtesting the game, even though there were a good number of dragons that were near me, it was frustrating when the movement dice brought me further away from where I wanted to go to. While playtesting, Dr Oon happened to be watching the gameplay and immediately pointed out this issue. Secondly, there is no strategy at all. Since the movement was totally random, players could not make any meaningful decisions, thus they are not able to come up with any strategies. In addition to the lack of strategy, the options were also not meaningful enough to work towards. Thirdly, since the dragons are faced down, players will be sceptical and may not feel encouraged to commit to getting the dragon. If the cards are faced up, players will be able to come up with a strategy and play around that strategy. Because of this, we decided to revert back to our original movement system of the Action Point Selection mechanic, but decided to add some new elements to it. Assignment 1 - Designer Diary (Part 1)For this assignment, my group came up with many ideas for the board game, but most of them ended up not succeeding.
For the first version of the board game, we were planning to implement a "moving around the map" mechanic with RPG elements. Some of the main mechanics include Area Movement, Action Point Selection, Player Elimination and Area Control. This version of the game had a few win conditions:
The first element of the game we had to come up with was how players move around the board and how combat worked. We decided that players will spend action points to move using the Action Point Selection mechanic. As we wanted an Area Control mechanic, we implemented a system where players can use an action point to place a marker at their current location to mark that tile. At this point, the game seemed too simple as there was no variation between players (like RPG games), so to add in some variety, I partially came up with the idea of using different classes to represent each of the players. We eventually chose to use some common classes in RPG games: warrior, archer, assassin, and paladin. While thinking of ideas of the size of the board, we were considering this game to be played by up to 4 players. By calculating the lowest common multiple (of 2,3,4), we felt that a 12x12 board is suitable for our game. Now that we got the basic idea of our game, we felt that it was necessary to add/improve elements of the game to make it able to stand out. Firstly, to make the classes feel more different, each class have unique passives that make them stronger. We decided to stick with the 'stereotype' of these classes (from typical RPG games). So, warriors have extra attack damage, Archers have extra range, Assassins have an extra action point, and Paladins have extra health. Players can choose to attack other players if they are in range of their attacks. While developing this idea, we encountered some balancing issues. The game can feel unbalanced as merchants can provide damage upgrades and there are treasure cards that increase the damage dealt (mentioned later). In this situation, one player could defeat another player very quickly, making the game not very fun for the victim. To solve this, we increased the base health of players while maintaining the amount of damage dealt so that players could survive for a longer period of time. After implementing classes, however, some of these problems returned. For example, when we compared the amount of damage a legendary weapon did with the amount of health players had, we found out that players died too quickly. Secondly, we added in Merchants so players can upgrade their stats. Players would take one each and scatter them across the board at the start of the game, and they could spend action points to purchase an upgrade of their choice. This also brought about balancing issues. Firstly, it was difficult to decide how the Merchants were to be placed on the map. If players could choose the position of the Merchants, they would intentionally place them around their 'spawn', giving them an advantage. If the positions of the Merchants were fixed, players would obviously want to rush to the Merchants to get their upgrades first to get an advantage, so there would not be much choice other than to get the upgrades first. Lastly, we had some difficulty in deciding what upgrades the Merchants could provide as we wanted the upgrades to feel worth but not too overpowered. For example, a warrior can get more damage from the Merchant, but him getting too much damage will not be fun for other players as they will die too quickly. Thirdly, treasure cards were added so weaker players could hopefully get an edge over the others. Players would take some of the cards and randomly scatter them across the board for players to pick up during the game. However, this also brought about balancing issues. Firstly, for example, one of the treasure cards grants the player extra damage, and it will be discarded after that turn. I felt that discarding the card after one turn made it not worth getting, but not discarding it meant that other players would get defeated more quickly. Secondly, similar to the merchants, players could purposely scatter them near their 'spawn', giving them an advantage. Before we could playtest this prototype, we decided to drop this idea of the prototype. This is because even before playtesting, we had already encountered many balancing issues (where fixing one problem would bring up more problems), and we knew that it would be extremely difficult to continue to balance the cards. Since we did not want to continue to work on a game that was too difficult for us to balance, we decided to change the mechanics and theme of the game, and chose to make a new prototype revolving around the same board. Assignment 1 - Video PitchHere is the link to my team's video pitch: www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqJkABxZFyE
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