Advanced Game Design Postmortem

My groups and my personal postmortem for the course in Advanced Game is now available on our group's wiki.
My individual postmortem
The group's postmortem

Board Game Progress Report (Advanced Game Design) - The End

Yesterday, we presented the final game that we came up with for the other groups and some staff at Campus Gotland. Below are some of the changes that was made to the final version of the game.

In addition to a slightly reworked board, there are also a few tiles on the board that only the monster can move on (marked green on the image below). The reason for adding those tiles is because we thought that the monster needed to get stronger in some way. We tried and solve this by having the monster rolling one or two D8 instead of D6 as the players. This made the monster to powerful however, so it was scrapped. What we instead came up with was a few shortcuts that only the monster could use, to improve it's movement somewhat. This also increases the risk for players searching the small rooms (marked 60 and 168 on the image below), as they can now "get attacked" from two sides. However, searching the small rooms gives the players two wand cards instead of one.







































Aside from the new board, the only thing that was added was the name of the game, which we decided to call ShadowPath. Now all that is left is to write a postmortem of the game and hand it in on Friday. Then this course is over and I start new courses in math and programming, my two favorite subjects!

Board Game Progress Report (Advanced Game Design) - 20131029

Today, we had our teacher for the course (Adam Mayes) play our game and give feedback on it in it's current state.

Initially, he was skeptical to as of how the monster's hidden movement was going to work in practice. However, after playing the game, he liked the game as it was. He got to play as the monster and the game was very tight overall to the very last. Although he thought that we could keep iterate on what we already had, if all of that failed, we could reverse to the game as it is now and hand that in.

One thing that we started testing before meeting Adam was a new, larger board and making it so that the players moves 2D6 rather than 1D6 each turn. The reason for testing this out is because we thought that the game would be easier to balance with 2 dice rather than 1, because now we can keep the average of 7 from 2D6 in mind when making the new board.

As before, Christian Roupé is the main person responsible for design the new board. Although we are going to make more changes to the new board, here is how the board looked earlier today.

As before, the monster starts in the middle and the other players starts in the corners. The red-marked rooms are search rooms, where the player has to search for the talisman and then escape the maze by getting to one of the corners.

Board Game Progress Report (Advanced Game Design) - 2013027

(I haven't made a blog post about some of these things earlier because there has been things that has been coming in the way for me)

This week, the work has been more divided among the different members in the group. One person was looking into a new version of the board for our game, others were looking into wands (what we call items in the game that could be found by searching) and others looked into writing on the game design document.

As a mentioned earlier, we now have a new board in our game, that is better balanced and more fair for all players. We also have new wands (full list is available here) that the players can use to their advantage and the design document is hopefully more readable.

We had a play-testing session earlier this week, were we let other groups test our game and give us feedback. Overall, people seemed to like our game but thought that we needed to polish some things more in the game. That is fair feedback if you ask me, the groups that tested our game brought up some good points that we can take into consideration when we keep working on our game.

In addition to new wands and a new board, we've made some other changes to the rules of the game as well. Now the players have two health  points, and they are out of the game when they have lost both of them. The players also have the option to steal the talisman from a player carrying it. This was added so the game would get more interesting, as we had noticed that the game could become stale as soon as someone got the talisman. Now the monster moves with a D8 rather than a D6 as the players, as we felt that the monster needed to become faster somehow.

The biggest challenge for us this week was to find a place and time where we all could together. Three persons in the group have the course Serious Games, and trying to synchronize those groups with this group has been a big challenge for us this week. And in my case, I had to skip over one meeting that the others were going to because of that it was the only time where we could work together because one person was going to leave the island later that day.

But with that said, I still think working as a group went well when we could work together. When we worked together, we were able to get stuff done and sort things out. We also know what we need to work on during the next week.

Board game progress report (Advanced Game Design) - 20131023

Today, some big progress was made to the development of our board game. Thanks to the work of our group mate Christian Roupé, we now now have a new board that is (hopefully) more balanced than our previous board.

One problem we had with out previous board was that the distance to the search areas were different for each player. But now, the distance should be the same for everyone, meaning that no player has an advantage over each other. Now we just have to play-test the board.

Board game progress report (Advanced Game Desgin) - 20131022

Today, some members in the group where busy with other things, meaning that we couldn't work together as a group this very day. However today me and my group mate Emanuel Palm sat down and work on the design document of our game, which is available at this project's Wiki Page. Note that it is still in development as of writing this, so things might change.

A design document is not necessarily a document, it can be a wiki page, a blog post or a traditional document. There are several ways to do a design document, but no matter how it's done the point is the same; to document how the game is going to be designed. Why is this necessary you might ask? The reason is there to document the ongoing decisions that is made to the design of the game. It can also be used to looked up what was decided design-wise, in case anyone on the team forgets it or if a team cannot agree upon what should be done. And as the size of the team increases, the more important a good on-going documentation gets.

The reason for having our design document as a wiki page is because it allows all members in the team to edit it. WikiDot also features a 15-minute "lock" on a page when someone is working on it, so that two persons doesn't try and edit the same page as the same time.

Board game progress report (Advanced Game Design) - 20131021

Today, we had a seminar this morning in Advanced Game Design. Marcus Ingvarsson, the teacher holding it, decided that each group talked to him in private where we demonstrated our game in it's current state.

Since our group had a late time with him, we decided to do some more polish to our game before showing it to Marcus. Today we tested the wands in the game (previously called items). The purpose of our game is to find a talisman and escape the maze with it. Initially the containing the talisman deck was separated from the rest of the cards, and it had some blank cards in it; but after some testing they where merged together as we found out that the game was going to work better that way.

Wands can be cast before or after the player has moved. When a wand is cast it is put to the discard pile. Below are some wands that are present in the game. Note that only one wand can be played each turn.

• Illuminate Allows the player that played the card to see where the monster currently is.
• +1D6 Allows the player playing the card to roll on an additional D6 when he would role for movement. The sum of both the dices is added together and the player may move up to that many squares across, the board
• Stun Stuns another nearby player, forcing her to skip her next turn.
• Teleport Short-range teleport for the hero
• Swap Swaps the player with another nearby player

Marcus though that we had a good base to build our game on. We needed some more polish to it, but overall he seemed to like our game. One suggestion he came up with was to try out different scenarios for the game.

Board game progress report (Advanced Game Design) - 201301018

Today my group had a short meeting where we discussed what was done during the week, and talked about what we needed tog get done by the next week. The things that we came up with was that we needed a more polished board (as someone brought up some problems with it during playtesting), item cards implemented into the game, and a way to improve the monster's movement.

During this upcoming weekend, I'm going to test some ideas of how to improve the movement of the monster. Among the things we talked about included that the monster rolls a D8 instead of a D6 and that the monster can move a certain amount of squares in addition to the one that is rolled on the dice(For example 1D6+2). The reason for doing it on my own is because the other members of the group are busy with various things during the weekend.

Board game progress report (Advanced Game Design) - 20131017

Today was a play-testing day, where the different groups in the course was play-testing each others' games. We had a total of three groups playing our game in it's current state. Overall, people seemed to like our movement system and that the monster in the game was only revealed each fourth turn or whenever it lands on the same square as another player. People thought that we had a good base to keep building our game from.

During play-testing some interesting things was noticed that we haven't noticed for ourselves. The first one was that certain players on the board had a shorter distance to the search-rooms (where they can find various items, including the item that is required to win the game) than others. Our current board is not final so it's something we can improve. The second thing that we noticed was that it was possible for another player to re-spawn on top of another player (two players cannot be on the same square under our current rules, and players are currently re-spawning on their starting location when they are killed by the monster).

This showcases that it is important to play-test your game often, so you can get feedback on things that you don't noticed yourself. With all that said, I'm happy that we currently have a base for our game that people like.

Board game progress report (Advanced Game Design) - 20131015

Today, my group in advanced game design sat down and did some design on our board game assignment. This day we tested the movement system that we was going to use in our game.

The idea of our game is that there is one monster player that is hunting the other players down, who in term has to search buildings to find a item, which they then has to get to a certain location. The first player who achieves this win the game.

But there is one twist to all of it, the monster stays hidden from the other players for most of the game. The monster is only revealed after a certain amount of turns has passed (currently four) or if they land on the same square the monster. If the monster and another player lands on the same square, the player is killed.

One question that might pop up know is, how does it prevent the monster player from cheating? The answer is that the monster writes down the movement he/she does each turn, which the players can then check up if they question it.

Our first version of the board and rules of the game

Now lets show some images from the development process today.

The initial version of our board looked like this. The monster starts in the middle and the other players starts in each corner of the map.

Each square was given a number on the board, which is used by the monster player to write down his movement across the board.

Here, the rules were that each player (including the monster) would roll a D6 and then move up to that many squares across the board. The roll of the monster is also open. The goal the players has is to go get to the white square, fins items and then retreat back to their starting square (1, 6, 11 and 16 respectively in the image above). The players can move between the diagonal shortcuts, marked with two white lines (all other white lines where not supposed to be there)

We did some testing with this board, but we quickly realized the the board was to small, becuase it became very easy for the monster to catch up with the players. So we decided to try out the same mechanics but with a bigger board. Below are some images from the evolution of our new board.

The second version of the board

We started out with a simple squared paper

Added some start points

We started to come up with ideas for a maze

 And eventually evolved it into our final version of the board

In this new board, the boxes that are red are search areas, where the players have to go to and find the items they needed. However since that system was not the main focus today, the search system didn't do any impact on the game play other than the player has to forfeit a turn when they search for items.

One thing needs to be said about the board. Aside from the two small blue lines just over the lowest red search area, every line on the board is passable as long as the players doesn't move into the filled blue territory.

Playtesting the second board

We kept the rules mostly the same as we had for our first board and played three games on the new board before we were to tiered to continue. The rule change was that instead of being permanently killed by the monster when they land on the same square, heroes are instantly respawned at their starting location instead.

This time, we liked the board better because this time, it wasn't as easy for the monster to keep up with the player and when the monster did, it was also more spread out over time and not all at once. We let different persons on our time play as the monster, and mostly got the same results to as of how often the player got killed.

When we was to tiered and hungry to continue playing, we deiced to call it a day as we had come up with a movement system that we were satisfied with and that we could build our other systems around.

Learning Video Game Design - Making Board Games

Time for a quick post.

Even though I'm reading two courses about video game design right now, I'm currently tasked with making a board game (in a group) in each course. Why is that? In my opinion, the reason for this is because video games and board games has more stuff in common than most people might think when it comes to the design part of the respective kind of game. For example, if you break down a strategy video games and a strategy board game, I'm pretty sure that you will notice many similarities between the games. I'm currently working on a post where I'm talking about what video games can learn from board games when it comes to randomness The post is going to be long though, so it will be a while before that post comes up.

Does games need to be complex in order to be fun?

Last week, we had an assignment in the course Advanced Game Design where we were supposed to play two board games and one role-playing game and write an analysis of them. I will not go into much depth about that, but after some thinking, I wondered if game needs to be "complex" in order to be fun to play. I'm gonna do some reflection over the board games that my group played.

Note that these opinions are my personal ones; not the ones of Uppsala University Campus Gotland nor those of my group mates. This is also my first blog post for the university, so I will improve my writing as time goes on.

Last Night on Earth

The first games that our group played was the zombie-survival game Last Night on Earth by Flying Frog Production (1). The game can be played by 2-6 persons and the players are divided into two teams, heroes and zombies. The heroes have a certain scenario that they have to fulfill before daybreak; otherwise the zombies win the game. A PDF of the game's rulebook can be found here.

At first sight, it may seem like the rules for this game are complex. And while there are games with more simple rules out there; these rules are not complex ass they might seem at first. The most commonly used systems in the game are movement, combat and playing cards. There is not much to say about movement, all characters in the game move a certain distance on a squared board. The rules for combat is similar to those in Risk.

The cards in the game modifies the state and rules of the game. While there are several different cards in the game with different effects, they never modify the rules so much that you all of a sudden have a completely new game. The effects of the cards themselves are actually not actually all that complex, the reason why it may seem like so is because of how many different effects there are.

For example, the card "Baseball Bat" allows the player to roll an extra dice in combat and after each use, it has a 1/3 chance to break (in which case it is destroyed). "Old Betsy" slows movement for the zombies and "Crowbar" changes the rules so that heroes wins on ties in melee combat (the zombies wins on tie by default).

So while LNOE has several rules and several ways to modify the rules; the game and the rules themselves is not that complex. What makes the game feel complex is that there are several different ways.

Settlers of Catan

Settlers of Catan is a social board game for 3-4 players (up to 6 can be supported with an expansion (2)), where players are trying to build up settlements and cities and eventually get enough points to win the game.

The core mechanic of this game is a simple one; roll two dices to generate resources and then use them to buy things to get points towards victory. You can also trade your resources with other players as well as with "the bank". While there are other game systems present in the game, these are  the things that you will be doing for the most of the game. And here the rules already seems more simple than the rules in Last Night on Earth.

Conclusion

While  I do think that LNOE has some flaws and Settlers has almost none, I do think that both games are just about equally fun in their own way. They are different games, different mechanics and different rules, but the biggest reason I like Settlers a bit more than LNOE is because LNOE has some flaws in it.

However, I did enjoy playing LNOE as well, I just think that there are some points in the game that could need more polish(1).

So while more complexity doesn't equal more fun, that still doesn't mean that complex games can't be fun as well.

End notes 

(1) There are expansions available to the game; but we only played the base game and as such, reflections is done based on what exists in the base game.

(2) The 5-6 player expansion of the game modifies one rule in the game and makes the game board bigger. The rule change is that players can now buy things at the end of another player's turn, rather than on their own turn. Otherwise, the rules of the game stays the same.