To start the game the deck of candidate cards will be passed around the table face down. When you get the deck of cards you are to choose a card randomly without looking at them. This will be who you play as during the game.
Start the round with the oldest player rolling the 6 sided die.
Play will continue clockwise.
Landing on a red or blue dot will gain you voters.
You can only gain voters if you land on the color that matches your party.
The amount of voters you gain each time is indicated on your candidate card.
Not all of the amounts on the cards are the same, this difference is based on statistics about voter preference in a candidate. Things like ethnicity and gender affect these statistics.
Special spots:
Smear campaign:
If you land on this space you are able to make a campaign against one of your opponents. First choose which opponent you will steal from and then roll the die to see how much of your opponent’s voters you steal for yourself.
1 = .1x of opponents
2 = .15x of opponents
3 = .2x of opponents
4 = .25x of opponents
5 = .3x of opponents
6 = .35x of opponents
Scandal:
Scandal spaces will make you lose a percentage of your voters.
That percentage will be said on the space.
Ad campaigns:
When you land on an ad space you will pick the card on the top of the ad pile. You will keep this card until the end of the game. At the end of the game you can flip these cards over and add how many votes you get to your score.
The game ends when everyone makes it to the end. The goal is to have the greatest number of voters.
What was the most frustrating aspect? Maybe not wanting/ not thinking about an answer to the card
What was your favorite moment? I like the calming color scheme. The discussion brought out aspects of other people you didn’t expect. The social aspect of this game was fun.
Was there anything you wanted to do? Maybe keep going… The board ends but what if people haven’t reached happiness? Could it be a circular pond?
If I had a magic wand to change, add or remove? Maybe labeling the colored lily pads? Which one is sad and which one is happy.
What should be improved? Board shape/ length of lily pad path – it stopped too abruptedly. Also, no vengeful water spirit cards were chosen… I wanted to interact more with that but then I also question if it contradicts your game’s message? Is the purpose of the game to talk through/solve problems leading to peace? because school questions don’t do that. I guess what I’m getting at is what is the purpose of the Ames Card’s in this game’s larger message.
Game Message? Venting, collaboration, and mutual support lead to social and mental benefits.
Game in 3 words? Empathy, conversation-based, social-health, deep, bonding
Other questions: If taken further, it would be helpful to add more clarity in the rules. how long does it take? Player range? Pieces?
For my projection experiment, I used a projector, a shower sheet, and a cutout box to project a circular, ocean-like light. I set up the projector on the floor and pointed it toward a small hallway in my suite. Then I taped up the shower curtain to project it onto and then placed a small box in front of the projector. Then I went behind the curtain to show the final projected animation. (The video will not upload, so I sent it through email)
Most frustrating aspect? I thought the spaces + dice combo was annoying. I felt like I was making progress so slowly. the number of spaces between each butterfly was always one more than the max (3). I felt like it added a sense of predictability: you roll, next turn you get a butterfly, you roll, next turn you get to a butterfly.
Most fun aspect? Answering the question cards
anything you wanted to do but couldn’t? I wish there weren’t card repeats. It makes it less interesting. Oftentimes, when someone reads a card, the group discusses it.
If I had a magic wand to change, add or remove? People shouldn’t begin by choosing to go left or right (people who go left will never win). There should be a couple spaces straight before the first butterfly choice which then directs them left or right.
What should be improved? the card and the boards. Butterfly player pieces would be cute.
Game’s message? to live cleaner and work towards a better world
Game in 3 words? persuasive, revealing, purposeful
What was the most frustrating aspect? People being colorblind
Favorite Moment of the game? People being color blind AND funny, creative, or unhinged descriptions of colors.
was there anything i wanted to do and couldn’t? I really enjoy this game the way it is!
If I had a magic wand to change, add, or remove anything? I think the colors on the card should match the board. I think they also could be more creative with the card designs – what if they were more inspired by pantone swatches? Also, I would’ve liked perhaps a different shape of marker?
Improved for next version? I think this game is functional and fun without any changes! However, I would enjoy the design changes as stated above.
The game, “Cry me a Pond” is about sharing experiences that create a sense of empathy among students that have experienced the struggles of life, generally through college, coming of age, and of course game design. While the game has a generally niche audience, the concept is based on sharing thoughts, feelings, and answering real questions that were part of the reading and assignments posted on Professor Ames’ website.
Primary Audience:
Generally the audience is media arts students that have a general understanding of being in a creative funk, but it can also be played by students who have general knowledge of game design skills.
Design Process & Thought Process
Iterative Design:
Amber: For the game board design, I decided to just do a simple pastel blue/green/purple gradient. I chose these colors because they are soothing and relaxing, which felt fitting for an empathy-based game. We decided to cut the pond shape out and I placed different colored lily pads as the spots to move on the game board. The font is simple, sans-serif, clean. We used Montserrat specifically.
The happy and sad card designs are very reminiscent of the pond game board design. The use the same gradient in the background with the same fonts. The backs of the cards are very simplistic, with a vector symbol to indicate the type of card and the words “Cry Me a Pond” for branding. The size of the cards are 3.5 x 5.75 inches, making them fairly large.
Thinking about what I would do differently for future versions, I don’t think I would change much aesthetically. I think the simple, pastel aesthetic is fitting for the type of game we decided to make. I would change a little bit of the board design though, since people were a little bit confused about what lily pad to move to next. I would also toy around with the idea of having some of the spaces become “flooded”, so maybe the lily pads are extra game pieces aside from the board.
Sara: For the design of the “Vengeful Water Spirit” I decided to create the ‘sprite’ using Procreate on my ipad. I stuck to a more chibi style of the Ames-esque look, as I wanted to maintain the simplicity of the overall style of the game Amber created with the soothing and relaxing colors, while also adding the comedic value to the character.
The water spirit cards also follow the basis of how Amber created the happy and sad cards, with a similar gradient, but in the color orange (as its Ames’ favorite color) and simplistic with the drawing of the vengeful water spirit in the middle of the words “Cry me a Pond – Vengeful Water spirit Professor Ames” the size of the cards is consistent for the game, being 3.5 x 5.75 inches.
Thinking about what I would do differently for different versions, I would have to agree with Amber on sticking to the same overall aesthetic and the new features she mentioned. For myself, however, I think I would spend a bit more time considering what the Vengeful Water Spirit cards would say, so there’s more aspect to knowing the concepts we learned in Game Design.
Players will collectively roll a die as a group, and communicate their feelings and thoughts according to what type of card they get from the three types. Based on their roll, being a 2 or a 6 or what color lily pad they land on. The game only ends once players reach “happiness”
Player Goals:
To discuss emotional experiences with fellow classmates, while also practicing your understanding of concepts mentioned in Game Design classes with Professor Ames.
Literally (in the game rules): get to happiness.
Gameplay Sequence:
When the game is set up, with the gameboard in the middle, and three piles of both happy and sad cards, one player will roll the die for the whole group (players can alternate amongst themselves who rolls the die each turn) with the role player will then move the duck the number of spaces as indicated on the die EXCEPT IF YOU ROLL a 2 or 6. If you roll a 2 or 6, pick up a Vengeful Water Spirit card and follow/discuss the card . DO NOT MOVE. However, If you land on a dark green space, pick up a happy card (the smiley face 🙂) and if you land on a light green space, pick up a sad card (the teardrop) after this is performed a few times – the game is over when you reach happiness.
Game Board & Components:
Our game board is both literally and figuratively a pond, where the one end of the board is depression and the other end is happiness. You want to move towards happiness so you use your duck to hop along the lily pads. The duck represents the whole group’s progression from depression to happiness. This definitely needs improvement in future versions since the current method of movement was confusing to players.
The different colored lily pads indicate the different cards that you need to pick up, with the light green being the sad cards and the dark green being the happy cards.
The other components of the game are the happy, sad, and vengeful water spirit cards. The happy and sad cards ask thoughtful questions to try to arouse meaningful discussion amongst the players. The vengeful water spirit cards are specifically game design oriented questions, that are more so based on memory recall, versus a meaningful emotional discussion.
The biggest lesson we learned from playtesting was that we need to work on a better way to balance the amount of times you get an Ames Vengeful Water Spirit card amongst all of the other cards. With the original rules and board set-up, it was nearly impossible for players to come across the vengeful water spirit just because they weren’t rolling the right numbers. There were also two few lily pad spaces on the board and it made the game go a lot faster than intended. So both the number of spaces on the board, the movement amongst the spaces, and how likely it is to come across the vengeful water spirit are all factors that we will need to improve upon in future versions.
Game Maker’s Play Test Notes – Cry Me a Pond
What questions did your players have? Players started asking questions about the movement of the duck, especially when we started to modify the rules a bit to make the game go slower. They were also not entirely sure about the path of movement and what lily pad to go to next.
How quickly did they learn to play? The players learned pretty quickly because a lot of it was simple discussion-based cards
What kinds of interactions did the players have? Players engaged in really good discussions with each other, as was intended.
What confused players? What space to move to next,
What made players excited? The idea of the Ames water spirit card
What did your players enjoy doing? Players seemed to enjoy answering the questions and listening to other players’ stories and answers.
Did any aspect of the game frustrate players? I think the movement more than anything, but also players didn’t like the game design-related questions as much (kind of reinforcing the concept of the game though).
Game Reflections:
Sara: I overall believe that this game has genuine value from its creation, and from its concept and playtesting. I really enjoy working with Amber, and being able to knock out a game really quickly that combines our sense of humor, and love for game design as a whole has been really enjoyable.
With the concept creation we also had a lot of fun, and found humor and lightheartedness in making our very appreciated professor into a silly vengeful water spirit. I also think that the value that came from playtesting was that others understood and appreciated the concept of letting loose and feeling your emotions, while also understanding the importance of how game design works is like a combination of both malicious compliance with Professor Ames in making a game, but also a nod to his hard work in getting us to appreciate the concepts of game design.
Amber: I’m honestly pretty proud of this game. While it first the crazy concept of it started out as a joke, it seemed to actually be a feasible empathy-based and educational game. I really wanted to make a game that captured my feelings of being so emotionally overwhelmed with everything going on and then at the end of the day having to still go home and work on design projects (like game design..). We definitely didn’t make this game out of hate for game design, but out of love, and the feeling of unfortunately feeling too burnt out to make a game that we are passionate about and proud of.
For future iterations, I think we could definitely add more discussion cards. I think we could lean into the happy and sad a little bit harder, besides some of the more general questions that we asked. Like we mentioned earlier, the game board design also needs some work, particularly in the layout and the number of spaces. The rolling of the dice is also a kink to be worked out eventually.
I also think it would be interesting to play around with the idea of the pond flooding or drying up, so that it affects the board’s spaces. We originally wanted to make Ames have laser eyes that would dry up the pond and you would have to “cry” (really just talk about your feelings) in order to make the pond fill back up again, thus allowing you to move. I think it would be worth it to revisit this concept in some fashion.
Finally, I think there is an alternate timeline where we could have this game not just be relevant to game design students, but we could still have some kind of general “monster” that people want to avoid. Maybe the monster is asking math or history questions..
Here is some brainstorming and research I did for the National Park game that I didn’t even end up making. I still might want to do this someday though, just not right now..
As rival funeral directors, compete to have the highest total score by appeasing deceased and loved ones’ wishes, while also trying to reduce negative environmental impact.
This game is heavily based on the idea of green final disposition (a concept explained at the beginning of rule book). This game is both meant to get people to emphasize with people and think about how loved ones may have different wishes than the actually deceased and to also educate people about some of the harmful effects of “mainstream” final dispositional methods while also teaching about some more green alternatives!
Primary Audience: 13+ at minimum because it has some darker themes, particularly people interested in funeral services like people studying to become morticians, alternative people, etc.
Design Process & Thought Process
Iterative Design:
For the initial design, I made different tile designs based on the different disposition methods. This was made using Adobe Stock Imagery, to get a baseline down for a prototype. In future iterations, I will draw this imagery by hand, but still keep a more simplistic, cartoony art style.
The token designs are simple icons that represent the different things like energy, emotion, CO2, etc. I drew these vector icons myself in Adobe Illustrator (not that impressive, but you know).
The card design was also entirely drawn by me, with the people being in a very cartoony, simplistic style, that is honestly purposefully bad-looking. I tried to switch up the people’s hair and skin colors to vary it a little bit, but in future designs, I want to give them more variety and character. I may also consider giving some of them religious garments that players will want to factor into their decisions they make. For the Deceased cards specifically, I just took the Loved Ones cards and put a blue tint over it so they looked more “ghostly”. In future versions, I’ll also want to give these more variety and might make them a little more “ghost-like”, without getting too far away from being human.
Game Mechanics:
You draw both a “Deceased” and a “Loved One” card each turn. You must look at what their wishes are and try to make a judgement about what disposition method they would be the happiest with. This can be a difficult decision, because the deceased and the loved ones can have conflicting opinions.
To select a disposition method, you trade in the required number of resources to place the deceased on that tile and lay them down. You can only do this if the tile hasn’t reached it’s max capacity, so you may also need to use your resources to purchase a tile if none are available. Different methods cost different resources and different amounts of them, so that is another thing that factors into the decision to use a method. You then reveal what methods the loved ones and the deceased were okay with and award yourself emotion tokens based on this.
With there being max capacities to tiles, it makes the game exciting for multiple players since you can use up the tiles and force someone else to purchase a tile on their turn.
Player Goals:
To try to appease both the “Deceased” and “Loved Ones”, while trying to still run an environmentally-friendly funeral services business. Ultimately, you want to have the most trees, energy, and emotion tokens, but have as little as possible of the CO2 tokens. Based on this, the player with the highest score wins.
Gameplay Sequence:
On Your Turn
Draw one “Deceased” and one “Loved Ones” card
These are the “clients” for your turn. You must consider both of their personalities and wishes when making a decision for how to lay the Deceased to rest. DO NOT look at the back of either of the cards.
(Optionally) Purchase and Place a Tile
Using your resources, you may purchase and place a tile during your turn. SEE TILES SECTION FOR MORE DETAILS.
Cemetery tile
Crematorium tile
Green burial tile
Human composting facility tile
Decide on which Method of Final Disposition to Use
Once you have decided, place the card of the Deceased on the tile according to the method you wish to use. SEE TILES SECTION FOR MORE DETAILS.
IF you cannot lay your client to rest during your turn, you will lose 2 emotion tokens
Collect and Discard Corresponding Resources
Flip both the Deceased and Loved One card over to see the effects of your decision. If you selected a final disposition method that is in red, lose one emotion token. If you selected a final disposition method that is in green, collect one emotion token.
According to the method of final disposition, collect and discard the resources that correspond to that method. (See the Tiles section for more information)
The gameplay ends based on the number of players. For 2 players, play until everyone places 7 Deceased Individuals. For 3-4 players, play until everyone places 5 Deceased Individuals.
Game Board & Components:
As of right now, there isn’t one centralized game board, but instead, you start the game with one cemetery and one crematorium tile and the game “board” is built throughout the game, as players purchase more tiles using their resources. In the future, I think a board that tiles fit nicely into would be a nice addition. This could also have the first cemetery and crematorium tile built into it for easy set-up. A centralized game board will also help guide players through the game more easily, with there maybe helpful reminders on the side about the resource cost of tiles.
I also have a few stipulations to building the game board, like with the cemetery tiles, you have to always place them against each other. I think it would be interesting to add more rules like this to the game board building process.
Overall, from playtesting I learned of certain things I can do to help players be guided through the game more easily. In the future, I should have reference cards or something on a centralized game board that quickly overviews the effects of using the different disposition methods. I should also include somewhere, like on the tiles themselves for instance, how much they cost so that players don’t have to constantly refer to the rules.
I also need to revisit the cost and benefits of the more “green” alternatives, because I don’t think anyone ended up using the human composting facilities. See below for more notes.
What questions did your players have? There weren’t a lot of questions, but they would ask each other about the requirements and what would happen with each tile.
How quickly did they learn to play? They learned to play pretty quickly. The only thing that was a little difficult to get used to were the specific requirements and actions that happened with each tile, so a key would probably be helpful.
What kinds of interactions did the players have? Players would influence the next player’s turns by taking up the different tiles. Players could max out the tiles, making the next person have to purchase a brand new tile. Players also would discuss about the people and their wants and needs
What confused players? I feel like the players didn’t really have that much confusion.
What made players excited? I think players were excited when they satisfied both the deceased and the loved ones.
What did your players enjoy doing? I think they enjoyed looking at the different character cards and how their needs and wants differed.
Did any aspect of the game frustrate players? I think having to refer to the rules constantly frustrated players, also not being able to obtain more energy very easily so it made them not want to do cremation or human composting.
Other playtest notes
clarify the way tiles are placed
i think the human composting needs more benefits
a way to yet more tokens
get more energy
maybe something to mark that the tiles aren’t open when they are maxed out
a key
Maybe add how they died, with effects from that
extra card and it could effect if they get buried or cremated
maybe green burial plots need to be separation
maybe the green ones can’t be near a crematorium
pretty easy to learn but there were a few things that they had to keep referring to
Game Reflections:
To reflect on this game, I honestly feel like I have a pretty solid start to make this a decent game. Playtesting was great to see that players actually enjoyed making the decisions about how the bodies should be “put to rest”, and I like how it also became something that was almost storytelling (like how are the deceased connected to the loved ones?).
Still, there are definitely some things I would do differently next time and with future versions. First, I want to fix all of the comments that I made based on my playtest notes. Specifically, I want to work out the resource values of the cards, and really refine the balance of that. I also need to find a way for players to get more energy tokens in the game.
I also think it would be interesting to add some more information about the different disposition methods, just for the sake of the player’s education. A few of my players didn’t know about the other alternatives such as human composting, and I think that would really add to the purpose of my game. In addition to that, I would also potentially like to add more disposition options, and maybe even some of the more ridiculous ones like being sent to space or turned into a diamond.
The game tile pieces would also need some refining, in both the design and in the feel. I like the idea of using magnetic tiles so that they don’t shift around, or maybe 3d printed or nicely cut woodblock tiles. I toyed around with the idea of velcro, but on second thought, I’m really not sure about that.
For my project, I chose to project various footage of cells and organisms observed through the lens of a microscope. The goal of this experiment was to be immersive, and test how some of life’s smallest structures could be displayed on a large scale.
First, I took all of my images and placed them over a black background via Instagram stories. This allowed me to quickly, and easily, crop the top layer image (through the microscope) into a perfect circle. I saved my creations back to my camera roll. Since I could not follow this same process for other forms of media, I used Adobe Premiere Pro to create a circular black mask around my video content. I then uploaded all of the media into iMovie so that I could arrange my content, add transitions, and adjust play speed. Since iMovie formatted everything onto a black rectangle, I utilized Adobe After Effects to crop my final into a square the size of my circular content and export as seen above. This would allow the footage to be compatible with RMU’s dome projector.
For my experiment I decided to do a projection of a car ride to RMU specifically when it rains for more immersion in the dome. I also wanted experimented with direction by turning the camera. I used my phone camera because I already had a specific spot for it and thought a circle around it would fit it on the dome. I didn’t realize my video was still not the right size until trying it out and it also made me realize that I need to consider length as the load time was very long.
I did another experiment that could have been a transitioned from the last experiment as it was me walking around RMU specifically going from Business School to the Gazebo. I realized only after that I recorded way too much and had to trim it done and speed it up. I also noticed that the camera was very unsteady compared to the other one (probably because I was holding it in this one) and the circle I tried to create turned to a weird oval that warp the image somewhat at the center.
