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.