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.
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