Bollywood Dance Off

INTRODUCTION

In my Game Design Class we were given the task of taking  the Famous Dance "Chaiya Chaiya" in the Bollywood movie "Dil Se" and make it into a party Dancing game. This seemed like a daunting task at first but after watching multiple videos of different Bollywood dance scenes we quickly came up with the idea of Bollywood Dance off. 

DESCRIPTION

Bollywood Dance Off is a territorial acquisition game where dance crew's battle it out to try take over the board.  

RULES FOR BOLLYWOOD DANCE OFF

Players

There are 2 types of players in Bollywood Dance Off (BDO) the first player type is Dance Master the dance master is responsible  for choosing the dance clips, the winners of the dance battles, and sometimes what kind of battle will occur. There has to be at least 1 Dance Master and no more than 3. The second player type is Crew member everyone who is not a dance master is a a crew member all the crew member must split up in to 2 -3 Crew's.

Preparation and Turn phase 

To start each Crew receives a set of colored stickers and a player token. Then the Crew's pick a starting point which are designated with a red dot.The youngest crew goes first followed by the crew on their right. The Crews take turns placing a sticker on one territory at a time until the board is filled

Turn Phase

1.      Move: You can move one territory at a time if you land on a unoccupied territory you must place a marker to claim it

2.       Battle: If you are beside a territory occupied by the opposing crew  you can battle them for it.

Territories

Blue Territory = Dance Master’s Choice

White Territory = Free Style Battle

Green Territory = Solo Battle

Orange Territory = Crew Battle

Battling

A battle occurs when a player or crew challenges another player or crew to a dance off for his/her or their territory. The challenging crew or person goes first in every dance off, the winner of the dance off is decided by the Dance Master. There are 4 types of battles DM’s choice, Free Style, Solo, and Crew.

·         Dance Master’s Choice: This type of battle occurs when you dance off for a Blue Territory the Dance Master gets to select what  the dance off is a free style, solo battle , or crew battle.

·         Free Style Battle:  Occurs when you dance off for a white territory, This is battle can either be a solo or crew battle which is decided by the Dance Master in a free style battle there is no time to prepare each person or crew only gets the chance to watch the dance clip and then they must dance off.

·         Solo Battle: Occurs when you dance off for a green territory each crew selects one dancer to represent them and the dancers selected face off each receiving 30 seconds to prepare a dance after they watched the clip.

·         Crew Battle: Occurs when you dance off for an orange territory. Each crew gets 1 minute after the clip to prepare their dance.

   INSPIRATION 

     When we found out we had to do a party dance game  we sat down and thought about  what makes a good a good dancing game what we came up with is two things that drive dance which are pride and competition when people dance competitively they feel like they are the best or their team is the best so we tried to make so the players feel that same intensity as competitive dancers by competiting against other crews over territories.

         RELATION TO CHAIYA CHAIYA

       Our game relates to chaiya chaiya because we made it so the crew's dance off by try to replicate dance from Bollywood movies which are famous for big elaborate dance scenes. Bollywood is the largest film industry in the world and is in Mumbai India so we made the board the map of India and you dance off across India 

Farmer's Feud!

This final week of GDP we have been given the task of educating board game enthusiasts with the knowledge of locally grown fruits and vegetables in Canada in a fun manner for everyone. This was an interesting task at first glance and as we progressed through the development of the board we came up with a creative way to teach people about this topic while playing a game.

When we first started brainstorming ideas we wanted to focus specifically in Ontario and only popular fruits and vegetables that people commonly eat or see often. The main parts that a player will take away from this is what fruits and vegetables grow in Ontario and when they are in season over the course of the year. We wanted to teach the players specifically where in Ontario these fruits and vegetables grow in Ontario but when it came to the development phase we had a very big imbalance in the board so we had to reconfigure it to be more balanced.

The main concept of the board game is you are a farmer trying to collect fruits and vegetables in Ontario while there are other farmers trying to do the same thing. You battle it out to be the most productive and strategic farmer in all of Ontario. These are the rules and how to play for the game Farmer`s Feud.

RULES/HOW TO PLAY

Game Bits

-board

-four player bits

-d6

-pen and paper for each player

-worth chart

Start Play

-everyone rolls once to see who starts and highest goes first then continues clockwise.

-choose any space on the board to place your player bit for the start of the game.

-gameplay starts in the month of January.

-starting player rolls die to see how far they can move for that turn and moves no more than the number on the die.

-player who starts checks to see which vegetables and fruits are in season and strategically moves across the board collecting as many points as possible for that turn. Each fruit and vegetable is worth a certain number of points based on their availability.

Continue Play

-next player also does the same thing as the first player.

- when other players are on the tile you want, you can contest them for it by covering the chart with all the stats and asking them a question based on that chart. They have 5 seconds to correctly answer the question the contester has made up. If the contested is right then the contester’s turn is over, else, the contester has a choice to steal a fruit or vegetable, or to move the contested to the opposite side of the board and move their bit to the tile the contested was on.

-if the player has successfully contested another player and still has available moves for their turn, they can choose to continue using them if they wish.

Finishing the Game

-if you decided to play a short game, first to 250 wins, medium game = 500 and long games equals 1000 points to win.

-first one to reach the set points wins the game.    

Storytelling in Games

In this weeks development of a board game we have entirely derailed from the actual construction and presentation of a board game to focus on the most memorable part in games, the story. Not only the story, but the story for a specific character within the game. This can either make or break a game from being the best developed game or being that game you dig for at the bottom of your collection to play. Lots of people base the games they choose to buy off of the story advertised. This is why it's so important to fully write out a detailed story from beginning to end for the players who are apart of the main focus of the game.

For the development of my character's story I have it organized in such a structure of an interview with the character I am developing the story for. For this interview I will be directing my questions to a person from France in the year of 1917. Let us begin the interview process!

Hello good sir, what is your name and some basic information about yourself?
Hello! My name is Armand Leveque and I am 23 years old. I am a young French farmer who is a devoted catholic. I am white with brown eyes and brown hair.
Where did you come from?
I came from the town of Strasbourg in France and lived on a farm owned by my family just outside of the town for several generations. I have family from England which I write to so I am fluent in English as well as French.  
Tell me more about your family.
Well, I still live with both of my parents and my three other brothers on the farm. Our father is old so we stay to help him manage the farm. My brothers are all younger and my mother is very young. She is also German which has caused some problems at the dinner table the past couple of years. Many of the people in the community suspect she is a spy since she is only my step mother. She has been in our family since 1914. Our real mother past away from giving birth to my youngest brother. I was only eight years old. My real mother was from England and that was where our family in England came from.
Was that the only difficulty growing up?
Trying to run a farm and a family in these times were very difficult. We had my uncle come from the city to help with the farm until my brothers became old enough to help to support the work on the farm.
How would one stereotype you at a glance?
I always get the stereotypical hard working farmer from my physical built body and the way I'm dressed always shows that I'm a farmer. The odd time I've been said to be a bouncer at the bars because I'm in such good shape. 
Do you have a romantic partner?
Sadly, I am without a significant other. I have no time to find someone with the work from the farm and my enlistment. My father had always told me that no one in this country will ever be someone for you. I always disagreed with that because I'd prefer to be with someone who is also from France. I actually have my eye on this one girl who is often at the market in town when my father sends me to get food we don't grow. 
Who is your best friend?
Since the enlistment I have one best friend who is my wing man Pierre Depaul. I met him three years ago but I feel I have known him my whole life. He told me he is from Marlenheim, just west of where I live. I would describe him as the procedural type, always following prototypical actions laid out for him. My friend would probably describe me as one who does crazy things that no one else would think to do. We balance each other out well. Both of us have the same inspiration. Rene Fonck is the greatest fighter pilot of France.
What is your economic status?
Being a farmer doesn't give you the riches of a king or queen but it provides us with what we need in life. I felt a large sense of pride in my country and I thought that if I enlisted I could provide my father with more money to afford better equipment for the farm. 
Would you steal to make your economic situation easier?
I may do crazy things but I am an honest man. I see lots of people at the market stealing and I think that I could do it too but it shows I'm someone who I'm not. Honesty is a virtue I keep strong in myself. It reflects in how my friends perceive me.
What is the one secret that no one must know about you?
I am confident to say that I am an open book with no secrets to hide. It's my way of keeping my word on being honest.
Are you afraid to die?
Fear of death? Ha! If anyone enlists with a fear of death they are making a huge mistake. Having a fear of death holds one back from their full potential. That's what differs Pierre and I. 
Thank you for your time here. You have a very exciting story!
Thank you for giving me time for your interview.
       

Remixing & Modifying

We had a week off from making board games so this week we're doubling up on our production of games. This week we have been asked to complete the assignment individually rather than working in teams and it seems to be that way for the remainder of the games (other than the final prototype). Huge Pixel Gaming will be missed. Anyways, onto the topic at hand, for this week there were two games that needed to be completed, one is a modified version of Tic-tac-toe and the other is a remixed version of one of the games made in the Game Design and Production class.

The goal for the mod is to create a game that is no longer solely skill based but instead has the element of luck in it. There must also be an attraction for an adult audience. The core element of what makes Tic-tac-toe has to remain in the game. So, having to line up what you play down to win must stay present in the game.

The objective for the remix is to redesign the entire game to be completely based on skill or completely based on luck. So for example, the game Snakes and Ladders is a game solely based on luck since all you do is roll a die and do what the die says. There is no skill involved whatsoever and theoretically could be played alone because of that fact.

Now to discuss the actual matter of the two games! First i will go over Tic-tac-toe and how i decide to add the element of luck into the game completely based on skill and how it becomes entertaining and enjoyable for adults. So I'm not going to go over the general rules of the game since this is a universally known game across the globe but what I shall talk about is the rule set I am deciding to add into the game.

-The first rule is to keep all the generic rules the same such as how play works, the winning condition, the board size of the game.
-The next rule is to now add a d6 or a coin into the mix. What you do with this lucky die or coin you have added to the game is roll or flip it
- and if the result is odd or heads, the side pieces rotate counterclockwise to the next space,
- and if the result is even or tails, the corner pieces rotate clockwise to the next space. Now, you roll or flip every time you finish putting a piece down and move all pieces accordingly.

This makes the game full of chance and luck with very little skill remaining. The way how it does that is it doesn't matter where you place a piece because it will most likely be changed to a new space without your control. You sit there placing pieces down and hope you get lucky. During the play test I have seen players shaking the die in their handing saying, "Pleeeeeasseeeeee don't land on an even!" with so much anticipation because if their piece moves from the blocking of the opponent then the other player has the win. To make this game more appealing to an older audience, the element of the game added was that each piece you play down was a small glass and then at the end of the match the glasses are filled with alcohol and the losing player must drink all the glasses. If it results in a draw then the players must drink the opposing players glasses. This adds mature audience entertainment and creates higher competition between the two players. That is my modified version of Tic-tac-toe to give the game more luck and adult audiences more incentive to play this game.

The next topic is remixing a previous game designed in our class and flipping the games core skill/luck. The game I'm choosing is one of my own games. It's actually my first game which is entirely based on luck. This game is, "Raider's of the King Cobra's Crown". Yes, this old yet amazingly intense game was just a matter of rolling the dice and placing the piece according to the rules. Now, what I'm going to do to this lovely, little, simple game is completely change the dynamic so the game is entirely based on pure skill. The new rules added are:
-Each player is given 4 spaces they can move in total for their turn.
-You don't have to move 4 spaces but you can't move pass 4 per turn.
-Players can now move backwards and forwards
Adding these three small rules change everything for this game. It gives players more freedom to do what they want rather than being stuck in a loop from back luck or being jealous of those who are experiencing good luck in the game. All of the other rules must still be in affect except for rolling a die to see how many moves you make each turn. However, you still need a die for the boulder as the rules for that have not changed. This will cause players to play strategically as they have multiple goals to achieve in order to win such as:
-collect the three items on the board
-be the first one to the end
-not get squished by the boulder
Also with the new ability to plan your move you can cause even more fun with affecting other players since it wasn't off of pure luck that what you did happened to someone but instead entirely your fault. This is because the rule still stands where if you move onto another player's tile they currently occupy you push yourself ahead and them back.
After play testing the game, I found this made the game more entertaining! It really surprised me because I thought that I already had a winning formula to a great game and that any sort of twist would set off a major imbalance and have everything no longer fun and intense as it once was.  

Art Game - Colored

Brandon Drenikow, Justin Challenger, James Kumchy, Anastasios Stamadianos, Chris Kishek

Name: Coloured

Number of Players: 4 players

Length of Play: 15 min

The Starry Night is a painting by Vincent Van Gogh depicting the town of Saint Remy from his view in the asylum he admitted himself to. In the painting a tree in the shape of a shadow flame stands in the foreground with the town in the mid ground and background. The night sky depicts many stars and swirls with a twist on the Ursa Major constellation. Many feelings can be felt from art, things that we felt while looking at the painting were anticipation, distortion, calm, and a sense of surrealism. These feelings were then analyzed in a few games we considered art games and then decided to look at how the games evoked the emotions. We decided to take what caused these emotions and incorporate them into our game.

This was all the design work for our first idea.

Huge Pixel had lots of ideas for what to do for our game. Our original game was that we wanted to have a board made out of four paintings or pictures that you would collect by walking around a board with game bits and a spinner. The goal would be to collect these pieces of the paintings and after everyone has worked together to collect these pieces they would work together some more to put these pictures together to form one big painting. The idea of working together would invoke emotions along with the actual paintings. However, we didn’t feel that this game invoked enough emotions and feelings as well as creativity or imagination so we decided to change it up slightly and make it more simple and abstract. This idea of turning it into something abstract came from the other art games we saw in class. They were very basic and had the player have to think and create an idea for themselves which made more emotions in each player.

 

Starry Night Game Moments

Coloured is an art game which focusses on the feelings you get from colours and piecing them together with other colours to create a puzzle from the inside out. The colours can mean anything to you happy, sad, fear, envy, it doesn’t matter, what matters is that you are building a puzzle out of colours that represent the emotions you get from the colour and that you are building it with other people. You can put love with fear because it’s connected that you wouldn’t want love because you are scared of being hurt. You could be happy and sad at the same time. All the emotions are connected and that is what the game is about, making a puzzle out of feelings and spending time with people while you do it.

When we play tested the game we found that players started playing colors reflecting their current emotion. Even when the players didn’t know what colors went with which emotions, they still played a lot of red and black at the beginning of the game.

The game is fairly open in regards to rules; essentially each person is given 16 tiles each, and simply connects their piece to other player’s pieces. Move the turn clockwise around the group each person placing 1 piece down. The game continues in a circle until all the pieces are placed. 

Liar's Revitalizing Blog

Name: Liar’s Revitalizing Dice

Players: 2+

Duration of play: 10min-1h

This week we had a little different type of board game to make because we didn’t actually make a completely original game. Instead this week we had to make modifications to an already existing game known as Liar’s Dice. This game involves every player having 5 dice and a cup to cover they’re dice. The idea of the game is to be the most deceptive. This is because your goal of the game is to state how many of a certain dice are in play. You don’t have to be honest but if someone thinks you’re lying they can call you out on it.

These are many core mechanics that cause the game to be the game that it is. When we were told to modify the rules to eliminate the positive feedback loop we wanted to make sure that these were still in the game. There were some mods we did make and they successfully eliminated this loop that means there is a time when one player gets an excessive lead making it look impossible for another to catch up. These mods are highlighted in our set of rules below.

Setup:

-          Give each player 5 dice and one cup.

Gameplay

 These rules are taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liar%27s_dice#Common_hand, as Liar’s Dice is not a game we made. Not that we took the “spot-on” rule from the “variations” subheading.

1.       Choose a player to bid first.

2.       Each player rolls their dice in their cup, and then peeks to see what they have.

3.       The first player makes a bid on all the dice on the board. This bid is in the form of “X amount of dice showing Y”. Note that they can falsify this bid, thus “bluffing”.

4.       Rotating clockwise, each player must increase the bid so that the total value of the dice exceeds the last bid. That is to say, 4 instances of a dice showing 3 give a total of 12, so the next bid must exceed this.

Continuing Play

1.       At any time, any player can call the current bid to be false. At this point, each player reveals their dice and the bid is verified. If there is the bid’s number of dice on the board or more, the bid is true and the accusing player loses a die. However, if the number of relevant dice on the board is less, than the accuser is correct and the last bidder loses a die.

2.       A player may also call a bid “spot-on”; that is to say, if there is that exact amount of relevant dice on the board, then every player loses a die apart from the accuser.

3.       If all of a player’s dice form a sequence – 1,2,3,4 with 4 dice, for example—then they obtain an additional die at the end of the round. (Justin Challenger, 100454022)

4.       If all of the player’s dice match, then they obtain an additional die at the end of the round. Or, if you have one die left and you roll a 6, then you obtain and additional die at the end of the round. (Brandon Drenikow, 100456599)

5.       The player with the most dice must roll in view of all players the number of dice between them and the player with the next highest amount of dice. (Anastasios Stamadianos 100454700)

6.       If a player loses all their dice, they are out of the game.

7.       The last person with dice wins.

During the development of effective mods that would eliminate the positive feedback loop, we came up with some honorable mentions:

-Instead of having all of the same numbers it was originally all sixes but that was near impossible until you had only one dice left.
-Playing a round blind. This meant to roll your dice and not look at them for the whole round. This wasn’t implemented because we couldn’t think of a good reward for doing that in which it eliminated the positive feedback loop.
-if you are in danger of losing a die, you can choose any one of your dice to hopefully change the previous outcome so the other person loses a die, however, if it's still wrong then you lose two dice. This was an interesting mod but we see how it would affect the positive feedback loop.

The modern Card game from a Retro digital Game

Cardstroids
2-5 players

30 min-1 hour

Happy Thanksgiving! This is our retro game from the Atari system that we made over the thanksgiving break. We had to make a card game from a number of different games made for the Atari system. Our Huge Pixel Gaming group decided to make a card game from the old classic, Asteroids. This game had great mechanics and gameplay which was very addictive for all its players as it ate many quarters back in its’ day. However, this game was only a one player game and that became our first problem we needed to overcome.

What we right away came up with is have attack and defense and have a player be the ship and another player be the asteroid. This gave us a base mechanic and the ability to play with more than just one player. We wanted to give this more though. Design block had a beat for the weekend right up until Monday night when a great idea came out involving a good old game we as kids use to play called ‘007’. This classic hand gesture game was also fast and addicting to play. So we managed to merge the game Asteroids and 007 into a great, fast paced, and addicting card game.

Here’s how it plays out, first a player nominates themselves to be the ship and all the other players are asteroids. The players have three options, charge attack, activate shields, and attack just like in the kids game but with an Asteroids twist. How we incorporated more players is we made all other players asteroids and the ship would get one extra move equivalent to the amount of other players. So simply the game was 1 vs x amount of players. The players will always start off charging their attack because they start with zero attack and from there comes a game of prediction as to what your opponent plays. The ship plays one card for each respective asteroid. The ship has three lives in total so when he gets attacked he loses one life. If he loses all three then the ship player rotates clockwise around the table. Asteroids don’t die so the game becomes a survival game. Whoever survives the most rounds as the ship wins. The point to attacking asteroids is to remove their charge so that player can survive more rounds.

This was the core dynamic and set of mechanics we decided to use as our final. There were other versions where there is a deck and players draw cards to see what their options are. The problems with that was the players would run out of charges and not be able to continue the game. We tried splitting the decks but that showed the other players what your options were and reduced the prediction aspect of the game. 

The powder keg is about to blow!

Out comes another great board game from this crazy machine we call Justin, Tassos and I. Continuing to pump out board games every week, this week's board game does deliver more exciting and intense strategy that you have been seeing throughout the previous boards. With this new board we had to use the core dynamic of collection. With collection as a core dynamic, making a game solely based on collection is difficult to make fun without some other dynamics involved to spice up the game play.

During our brainstorming session over skype during the weekend, many ideas were thrown around on what we were collecting and how we would collect them. Another big question we had to ask ourselves is how are the players going to interact. The biggest problem we faced in the whole process of developing this board and ended up being the final adjustment to the game was making it challenging for the players. We found that the players had it too easy and that they could finish the game rather quickly with little player interaction.

After all this we finally had an idea down on how the game was going to work out. The initial idea was to have a hex grid that players move around on and then we have these pickups that you collect and then you must eliminate your opponents being the last man standing. We had collecting involved but realized that it isn't the core dynamic but instead it was destruction. So later on we made the objective be to have collected a certain amount of these pickups to win. We came along a bunch of ideas for what these pick ups would be, speed boosts, steals, armor, damage, ranged, etc. which slowly worked out to only be attack, defense, and speed. For a long time we tried to implement a ranged attack but we found that it really put the game off. So we removed it and found there was an imbalance now having three pickups and four players. Then a brilliant idea came out of left field that was to not have different pick ups but the same pickup spread across the board and then the player can choose what they want it to be for the three.This added a whole new level of strategy!

This was the second last design of the board before there were less crystals in the game.

When it came to designing the board we also had many ideas for that. We had the board split into 2 with bridges in the middle which then got split into 5 with four corners and an area in the middle all connected with bridges. Then a board with 9 areas was developed having all adjacent islands of land connected with bridges. However, after the idea to have generic pickups, which were named in the end as crystals, we realized we don't need to split the board up and that a completely open board worked well with that new mechanic.

Once we had finished polishing up all our ideas we made a small version and play tested it having an open board with 37 crystals on the board and a d6 for the dice. The match ended in 5 turns. We looked at the problems and realized that there were way too many crystals and it made players have no need to interact. The solution to that problem was simple, to reduce the amount of crystals so the players have to fight each other more to collect all 10 crystals they need. We also changed the dice to a d4. The number of crystals was then reduced to 24 and game play was not only longer, but way more strategic and intensely fun. This was game set and match for the mechanics in place for the game.

A smaller version of the game used to play test new mechanics.

How the game actually plays is that a player would roll to see how many moves they can move in a turn plus there speed level. Everyone starts at level 0 for all three attributes of speed, attack, and defense. To increase levels you collect a crystal to gain one level in an attribute of your choice. Speed gave you +1 to your move each turn, attack gave you +1 on your roll for attacking another player, and defense gave you +1 for your roll when you are defending. Initially players will move around the board collecting crystals and when there are no crystals left to collect, players must fight each other to force them to lose and drop a crystal where they lost the fight. To fight a player, one must be adjacent to another player with at least one move left. When you attack you both roll and add your attack and defense to your roll respectively, whoever has the highest wins and forces the other player to lose a crystal by dropping it where they were and return to where they started. If there is a tie then the players roll again. The player attacking ends their turn after the battle is finished. If they won, they do not collect the crystal because they are not on the tile where the crystal is dropped. In order to collect the crystal, on your next turn you must move onto that tile to collect it, that is, if it is still there. The loser must remove a level to one of their attributes at the end of their turn. First person to collect ten crystals wins.

Match Making at Sea

Brandon Drenikow 100456599

Name of Game: Hearty Pirates

Players: 5

Length of Play: 30min-1 hour

This was our first prototype board game we had to make and present in front of our whole class. This game had a few restrictions as we needed to make the game follow a novel written by Jane Austen, have pirates for characters, and to avoid having the core dynamic be racing to the end. This initially caused lots of design block for our team, Huge Pixel Gaming which consists of James, Chris, Tassos, Justin and I, because none of us has had the opportunity to read novels written by such author. Also how we were going to make pirates as characters was another speed bump which we later got around in an innovative and creative manner. This was a set back for us because our team lacks a great artist who will draw good pirates.

All week before it was due our team did great amounts of pre-production and brainstorming. We came up with many ideas for the game based off of Pride and Prejudice because that was the one novel that has a movie made for it that we could all easily watch. Following the trying to take the easy way out we came up with an idea for a game with the dynamic of Racing to the End to be the first to get true love like in the Pride and Prejudice book. We would've had a simple board with basic special effect tiles and everything would've been quick and easy. Just to make sure that was ok we shot the prof a tweet and were notified that producing such game wasn't the best idea. Back to the whiteboard we went. We assigned everyone a book to look at and see if anything else had good ideas to make games from.

We sat in this room for several hours crafting the next best thing to sliced bread after we decided not to be like everyone else who were making collection games. Thinking outside the box to stand out the most from everyone else we thought to make a board game without a board. This was a great start to being unique. Following ideas included having prediction for a core dynamic and possibly mixing ideas from the games Clue and Guess Who. But how was all this going to relate to Jane Austen? The team came up with a great idea which related to Emma, where the main character, Emma, has a hobby of being a matchmaker. Slowly we manipulated everything we thought up into one game which is now formally known as Hearty Pirates.

Ok, so for the mechanics of the game, you are a player looking to find the love of your life. Emma is the host as well as a player, she shows you who you are interested in. She does this by giving you a Match card. This is what you are interested in another person but you don't know which player that is. To find this out you must ask the other players questions about their attributes. The player being asked secretly answers with a yes or no card. The player asking then records the information to help them remember things they asked about. The thing is, you can't ask them questions about attributes on their match card, it must be any of the other attributes listed. Once you think you have gathered enough information to confidently ask who your true love is, you ask a person if they are. To confirm this, you see if all eight of your Match card attributes match the attributes of the player you are asking. If one does not match, you did not find your match made in heaven and are forced to forfeit the game from embarrassment and humiliation. If all match, you found your true love and win the game!

This game is a really fun game when you know what you are doing. I can see it being a slower game for people who don't exactly know what's going on. There were a few things I wanted to change in the game to, in my opinion, make the game better. I first think that a board would've been great and have the players requiring to land on certain tiles to be able to ask questions. Also, I had a great idea to have, when a player goes to ask a question that they instead of asking one question, they call it a date and ask each other three questions to gain information faster and make it relate more to the novel.

Other than a couple minor changes that could have been made, the game still resulted in a great game which is very creative and fun. Hope you enjoyed all the pre-production and finished product photos. 

The War of the Ancient Elements

Name: Element Wars

Players: 2-4

Length of Play: 30min to an Hour

So we had our second board game assigned to us which involved using the dynamic of territorial acquisition. Again, we had no restrictions other than that dynamic and it had to be done in a group this time. So for my group I chose the people I played my previous board game with in the lab for Game Design. I had so many ideas because I have loved territorial acquisition games ever since I was a child.

Being busy with all of the other classes during the week and work on the weekends as usual, this was a Monday night game making blitz. There was no other great time to construct and develop the game other than the night before. Initially, I had the idea to do elements, Tassos had the idea to have some additive bonus or resource which moulded into energy, and Justin had the idea to use a hex grid for the board. So we took those ideas and squished them all together, fortunately, no boulder was required for squishing in this time.

The development of the board and game bits.

We gave those ideas to each other over the week when we were busy and over the weekend we put together the pieces required to test the game on Monday. This board game wasn’t as lucky as the previous and I’m referring to how all the mechanics worked out perfectly the first time. There were a lot of changes, modifications, nerfs, buffs made all over the place just through one play through. At first, the energy tiles in the middle were worth more and they had to be reduced when a player had 17 moves in one turn. That was a little over powering. Also, the blockers could be placed anywhere and there were two of them, this caused lots of problems. Then it came to the advantages and disadvantages each element had, where one was stronger to another yet weaker to a different one. This was declared unfair and not fun by a friend who we tested the game with so the mechanic was dropped.

I really liked the idea of having advantages over a certain element but it was easier to remove the mechanic to make the game less confusing and more balanced. There were four elements that were fighting, Water, Fire, Grass, and Rock. These elements would each have strengths and weaknesses to another competing element. For example, water had an advantage over fire and the mechanic was that it would cost one less move than usual to capture their territory and had a disadvantage over grass so it would take an extra move to capture their territories. This also played a big part of our theme which was elements, so it would've been nice to keep that in there to give more to the theme. Another problem that was addressed but unable to change was the layout of the board. It was not a square so it caused players to start too close to each other. We tried to fix this problem by moving the spawns farther away and adding the blockers. It made enough difference adding those two to make the board more interesting and fair. We also had an idea for gaining resources that could be spent on different abilities such as re-rolling or a double roll or free territory capture etc. The resources idea was replaced with the energy territory mechanic to keep the game simple. If we put more time into thinking the game through we could have implemented these ideas and had them smoothly work with a good balance for all players.

Overall the final product of the game is still fun and full of strategy. Having tweaked the energy territories it gave the right amount of addition to the amount of moves so the game was challenging and fast paced. By excluding a lot of ideas for extra mechanics we kept the game simple and more enjoyable for new players. 

"I want to watch the boulder in action!"

Game Name: Raiders of the King Cobra's Crown
Number of Players: Minimum 2, ideally 4 with no limit to players.
Length of Play: 15-30 minutes for 4 players.

In our first Game Design class we were assigned to make a prototype board game over the weekend that had the core dynamic of racing to the end. There was no other restrictions other than the game's core dynamic had to be a race to the end and it had to be done individually. So off I went to go and make my first board game for game design. I remember I made a board game back in grade school so this is my second board game ever.

Anyways, when I got home from class I had to work so Friday was a write off. So was Saturday and Sunday due to work but on Monday I got right to work on designing my board game. First, I went over my notes I made from class and saw my board I copied down from the white board and some notes i wrote from other student's participation in class and thought to myself, what do all of these have in common and I should create a theme with it. Well, with snakes, boulders, ladders, collectibles, effects, and player interaction, all I could think about was the theme Indiana Jones. From there the ball really started rolling, haha.

I got right to the large design on four 8.5 by 11 sheets of paper and sketched out the tiles. When it came to the snakes and ladders I had to keep a consistent theme so I quickly went online to do some research on Indiana Jones to find cobras were his type of snakes he feared most. Secret passageways came into mind for ladders simply because temples and caverns always have secret passageways. And after I developed the board I noticed the player could win in about two rolls. So I felt the player needed to reach certain checkpoints before they finish to make the game play out longer and created more fun. This worked out really well because people felt really satisfied to have reached these checkpoints. As I was researching I also came across different iconic objects that went with the theme of Indiana Jones, his hat, his whip and his treasures. So from there I said these could be the checkpoints the players need to reach! I drew up some small pictures on three tiles to make it clear which tiles were checkpoints. Then once the complete sketch of everything on the board was done I needed to pick a color scheme for the board. I chose browns, oranges, and yellows because it goes well with the Indiana Jones theme and the theme of treasure hunting and caverns or temples. Lastly, I needed a name for the game, after some discussing with a peer on the topic of my games name, the end result was almost Corsair's of the King Cobra's Crown but since the game isn't about pirates I left it as Raiders. Again, it went better with the theme and how 'King Cobra's Crown' made an appearance in the name was the theme and the goal of trying to escape with a treasure, that treasure being the crown. Kings have crowns and cobras are Jones' biggest fear. It worked perfectly.



This is my game in action with the rules and color scheme on the side, I used pins for characters and I used a big eraser for the boulder.

About the mechanics of the game, following the theme, the players need to escape the cavern to win. The players roll one six sided die to move and they have to move the amount of tiles shown on the die. If the player lands on an entrance to a secret passageway, they advance to the end of the secret passageway. If the land on a snake tail the snake brings you to it's head. If you pass or land on a tile with an object, you get the object. If you land on a tile where another player currently is you advance one tile and they go back one tile. If you reach the end and you don't have all three items you are stopped on the last tile, which has a cobra on it that brings you back to before the first object. This gives you a chance to try and collect the items again.

With that previous game mechanic, where players push others behind, it can cause crazy amounts of movement across the board because of the placement of the cobras and secret passageways. This final mechanic really applies a great deal of excitement and fear into the game for the players and that is the boulder! This NPC has only one objective, to squish everyone. One player will roll for the boulder to determine how far it rolls each turn. If the boulder rolls over you or lands onto your tile, you are squished and miss a turn! The boulder has the same rules applied to it as the players in terms of the cobras and secret passageways. This can either save a player or put a player in harms way. If the boulder reaches the end it continues it's roll at the beginning of the board.

With all these twists and crazy game mechanics it causes an intensely fun game that players want to play again and again.

Don't let the rules scare you away from this great game!

Box Art

Game - Chez Dork
Players - 2-6
Duration - 30 min to 1 hour

Intro - So we were given 35 minutes to play this game in class on Friday, however, as we had dealt the cards to start playing this odd looking new game, our time was up. This became frustrating to myself as well as the others in our group of players. What caused this frustration? Well, there were a couple of things that could have been improved to make this game run smoother at the beginning which I will explain later on.

Rules - This is a quick sum up of the rules. Everyone starts with 30$, a playable character and five cards known as Stuff. The goal of the game is to own a total of 25 points before anyone else does, that happens by buying the Stuff in your hand and counting the points that go with that Stuff you buy. Each player has a specific permanent Obsession (unless you're Carson) and you can obtain temporary obsessions from the deck of Stuff. You're only allowed one temporary obsession (again, unless you're Carson). These obsessions are important because they can double the points for the Stuff that match the obsession. There were also advantages and disadvantages to each character. The game is turned based and on your turn you receive an additional 30$, refill your hand to five cards, and can purchase additional cards for 10$ in which you must buy before you can do anything with them. Once purchased, on your turn you can then choose to keep, sell, or auction off. You can only do one of the three per turn. Then the turn moves clockwise to the next person and the process repeats for the next player. Oh, and on your first turn you can only buy cards from your hand.


Examples of the temporary obsessions, Stuff cards, back cover, and special effects cards.

What I liked - I am a huge fan of strategic games and this game turned out to be a big strategy game in the end. The strategy comes into play when you get special effect cards like being able to change someone else's temporary obsession so they lose lots of their double points or trading the right things to maximize your points and gain the lead in point score. This was a huge design pro for the game to have an innovative connection of prediction, collection, and trading dynamics with a supportive dynamic of racing to the end. With prediction you had to play as if it was like chess, thinking one move ahead of the other players with the available options you had. Collection was their strongest dynamic because the game was to simply collect Stuff. Trading became another major dynamic that really added a lot more strategy and overall fun to the game. Racing to the end to have the most amount of points was on everyone's mind at that table the day we played. The mechanics of the game were also a plus once you knew how they worked. There was just so much variety with the uniqueness of each character having their own obsessions and advantages and disadvantages. Also the additional temporary advantages along with the ability to trade and auction off your Stuff was a great way to put your social skills to work. Other things I liked were the creativity put into each card's picture and quote. The concept of a bunch of dorks collecting stuff was humorous as well as pretty much the whole game. There was humor under every face down card.

What I didn't like - This is not beginner friendly as our group had difficulties understanding the rules at first, mostly because of how it was written and organized. There were details on certain things such as how there was how to win details spread out throughout the rule book. I also felt there was gaps in some of the rules so we had to make up some rules for the special effects cards. It has a very slow start as well and to get back to your turn with 6 players is way too long. The biggest problem with this game is the lack of game bits for money, and just to be sure it wasn't just our copy of the game I looked up other blogs about this game and found the game doesn't come with game bits for money and people had to improvised food as their currency. We were lucky to have poker chips available when we played. Also, I found the character Ken to be unbalanced having no disadvantage and being able to accumulate money from discarding cards in his hand. It would have also been nice to have the game on a platform such as the pc because it would have had the game play much faster.

Ways to fix the above problems - Make the rules easier to read and understand, confirm odd scenarios with certain special effects in the rules, add more starting money and keep turn income the same to get the game moving faster, add currency game bits or at least pencil and paper to manually write the currency down, give Ken a disadvantage and change his advantage, and have a digital version of the game.

Conclusion - After all the minor headaches the game causes at the beginning and once you know how to play, the game has got you coming back for more with its great game play and required strategy to win.