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.