Game: Board Game

Genre: Strategy board game

Materials: game board, 4 pieces of 1 color,4 pieces of another color, 2 larger pieces.

What went right: 

1. The game introduced a fun way to play a game by bring stategy and the battle of the wills.
2. Players have to fast with good reasoning to why the space they land on is better than their oppositions.
3. The bigger board brought in a better range of moves to make the game a bit more strategic.
4. The bigger piece (Laser Beam) introduced the fear factor that would make the strategy a bit more interesting.

What went wrong:

1. Players started to try and escape rational thoughts to try and will a fight.
2. Many people seem to stretch what could really happen to “What If’s”.
3. Game board was first small and now seems better with larger board but color might need a smarter placement.
4. Lazar Beam pieces was good but when they fought each other, it came back to ration thoughts.

Lessons Learned:

Overall I think this was a great start for a game but I think it needed more thought to what pieces did and colors. I also think that some views of others as to what is rational thoughts for an argument can be tough to moderate.

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Game: Last Game

Genre: Mini Games

Matierals: Board, Pieces, Markers, Coins

What went right:

1. Mini Games
2. Each mini game had a good story behind it to allow for a complete story back to the main game’s idea.
3. Each mini game was fun but fast to help make think game fun.
4. Mini Games allowed for 2 players to several more to play.

What went wrong:

1. At first we had a tough time bring our ideas together.
2. There are a lot of pieces to this game.
3. Does require a bit of trial and error for catapult mini game.
4. rolling dye to fight mini game boss needed a better way to monitor what was already rolled and what wasn’t.

Lesson Learned:

I had a great time with this game, it was almost a redesign of the original ideas and that redesign was a good idea as now we have a fun game that is very complete. This game can also easily implement even more mini games without to much trouble.

First Impressions: At first I was lost to what the game was about, I quickly looked at some tips and found out right way the intentions of the game. From there, everything was really easy to understand. Overall I thought the game was extremely interesting in design and fundamentals.

First Essey: I think that Today I Die uses linguistics in a very simple way as it brings the sad story to a happy ending by simple word changing as the game progresses.

Second Essey: The basic game mechanics where different as there didn’t seem to be a brain buster but it was very liniar, there was no failure but maybe that is because it is simple poem, “Don’t read it like a game, play it like a poem.” I think that if we read the game like a poem and not a traditional game then the rest just seems right.

I don’t know if I would call this a game as much as I want to call it an alternative story telling method. It has basic game play elements but it lacks the win/lose of a game.

Corvus describes the game as being a poem that has no “failure” mechanic and make the game more like an exploration. Also, the game does not ask us to “Beat” it either making the only true way to “fail” by quiting.

If I would create a game with similar mechanics, I would try to make the game more story telling rather than poetic. I do think that any problems that might show up would be how the game would play and how would it end. You want the game to go smooth but if you introduce a nonfailure style then you may get the same problem that “Today I Die” got, and that was getting lost of what to do next.

Game: UNO RPG

Genre: An RPG style game

Materials: 1 Uno Deck

What Went Right: 

1. The fighting mechanics seem to work really well for our game play.
2. Our story is what built on the overall understanding of how to play the game.
3. Overall the balance of game play for easy and or challenging seems to work in both ways. At one moment, everything seems lost then the next, everything goes right.
4. The co-op style helped bring in the drive to win and gave for better success.

What Went Wrong:

1. We changed our game style 3 times, finally we found a style of game play that, although seemed overwhelming at first, became very easy to play and understand.
2. We had troubles with some math mechanics. We were unsure if we should go with +2 bonus cards or x2 bonus cards. The trouble was that one way made things challenging and the other almost made it too easy.
3. Our initial setup guide needs work. With so much detail, it became so confusing.
4. Needed a game play layout guide. Without that, it made the game difficult to remember.

Lessens Learned:

• Simplify game play. We want to make things interesting but not overwhelming. To be able to take an UNO game and make it into an RPG is really awesome but now to make it simple.

The best game ever.

The game state of my game involves 4 players that are on an epic quest to obtain the 4 elemental powers from their guardians. Players must work flip cards over to find the monster card. Players will battle different monsters as they progress and as they defeat the monsters, they build themselves to be stronger to beat the elemental guardians. The game views of my game involved hidden power ups and also a fog of war style play with unknown obstacles around every corner.

As a player progresses to find an elemental guardian, they must lay out a path and as they path gets longer, the chances of finding that guardian get higher. There only so many cards in the deck so as more are played, you know you can then beat the final boss.

I don’t quite know how or what would be the best way to make it more clear or concise but I do know that in the games current state, it is easy to understand what is going on.

Setup: The cards must be placed into piles that are described to be used for the players and for the game play.

Victory: Once all the elemental guardians are defeated, player with the highest damage value wins.

Progression: Players will flip cards over from 1 of 4 decks to progress though an “Island” to find and battle the elemental guardian.

Player Actions: The player must choose a higher based attack card or power up card to defeat their obstetrical and must coop play with the other 3 players to defeat the boss.

Game View: Players are in a fog of war as they progress, the attack cards can be chosen to help defeat the next monster.

My game is dynamic due to how you draw and select your attack cards as well as you never know how soon you may draw an elemental guardian to fight.

The goal is to defeat all the elemental guardians and to end the game with the highest attack points.

The theme is a dynamic RPG that allows the players to choose the next path they take. The path or choices they make may determine if they will lose or win the game.

After reading the Game Core aticel, I found that there are some good things that are brought up. Of these cores that are listed, our game has two big ones that they center around. Core one is to survive, this is big because our game makes the player look for ways to beat the opponent. The second core is to Build, as an RPG, the player must build themselves in the game to beat the opponent and become stronger overall.

Now there are a couple cores that are not good at describing our game. These cores are Trading, because you must earn your right to be stronger by defeating and winning against the opposition. Another is Chasing or Evading, our game doesn’t evolve anything like that as you must compete straight to the opposition.

In order to change our game to the opposite, we would make the game less about building and give the player a pre-made setup and create a race to fight and finish. This would include trading with fellow gamers to reach a cooperate goal to beat the common enemy.

These changes would affect game play dramatically by taking out the roll playing aspect. It would not completely stop building aspects but it drastically hurts how much you can build if no one wants to trade with you.

I really like the building core aspect, I like the idea that you can create your game by how well you understand what your building. The more you understand about a build, the more you can improve on it. This is a strong reason I like the building cores.

After reading Ian Schrieber’s excerpt from his game design course, I have come up with a few answers to some questions.

The first question asks, “Discuss which definitions seems most in-line with how you think about games?” The definition that I feel is most in-line about how I think about games is the, “Voluntary effort to overcome unnecessary obstacles.” I find this definition very fitting for many games I play. I always asked myself why do I have to slid down a snake in Snakes and Ladders. To build a game that is challenging and fun, these rules create the obstacles that must be overcame, regardless to how unnecessary they truly are.

The definition that I feel is least fitting is, “Games have four properties. They are a ‘Closed, formal system’” I truly think that this idea is inaccurate because I have played card games that rules have been altered and or changed just because people have played many different versions of it. So this means that games are more open and less formal to everyone who wants to alter the rules.

Some strong various definitions that I have seen is the difference between formal and open ideas. To think that games are all closed set and formal to thinking that games are open, free and voluntary is a drastic change between definitions. The definitions that are close between them is that they all do have rules that restrict or define a games general purpose. These ideas also have a common idea that a game has a winner or a loser.

A fuzzy game that is tough to define is something like Puzzles. Puzzles have an interesting take on how you play it as if there are any rules then it is simply that the right piece or word must fit in order for it to be correct. I think that a puzzle is not a game but more of an interactive objective of completing the puzzle. Though there is the objective to try and win, it still feels like you don’t have rules that otherwise restrict or define the play. It was noted that it may not be a game but can be found within games. I think that it is not a game and does not accurately fit the definition.

- Andrew Masat

Here is my first post on tumblr, just trying things out.