I like the idea of using action cards to get the ingredients to make a salad. I agree though with the action cards, I feel like people mainly focused on the chaos versus the actual point of the game. Regardless though I like how everything came out, especially the design of the cards.
Court of Champions
I like that it’s a trivia game based on one subject. The improvements made from the original prototype to the new board is very good. It’s cool that you put in the time to 3D print everything instead of buying them online.
Garden Glory
I like the point system. Love the design of the cards, it’s very simple but clean. Want to see how the new greenhouse spaces work. I love how she took notes from photosynthesis and applied it to her own.
Anansi Web of tricks Third Playtest: Final Observations and Adjustments
Third Playtest: Final Observations and Adjustments
Feedback:
The third playtest demonstrated the near-final state of Anansi’s Web of Tricks, showcasing its refined mechanics and balanced gameplay. The reception was overwhelmingly positive, with only a few minor insights to consider:
1. Dynamic Interaction:
• Players praised the high level of interaction throughout the game. Mischief Cards and character abilities encouraged strategic thinking and constant engagement between players.
• The combination of sabotage, strategic defense, and adaptability made every round unpredictable and exciting.
2. Replayability:
• Testers highlighted the game’s replay value due to the variety of character abilities and Mischief Card effects. No two games felt alike, which encouraged players to experiment with different strategies across multiple sessions.
3. Balanced Abilities:
• Adjustments made during the second playtest to balance character abilities were well-received. Players felt that no single character was overpowered and that every ability had clear strengths and weaknesses.
• For example:
• Anansi’s card swap was impactful without feeling unfair due to its once-per-round limitation.
• Fari the Hyena’s laugh mechanic now provided a consistent and enjoyable disruption to opponents, adding humor to the gameplay.
4. Reduced Downtime:
• The streamlined Mischief Card rules significantly reduced delays during play. Targeted effects (e.g., Steal or Wild Distractions) resolved quickly, allowing the game to maintain a steady pace.
Notes from Testing Across Age Groups:
1. Learning Curve:
• Younger players (ages 10-15) adapted quickly to the mechanics, especially the use of character abilities. The thematic connection between characters and their powers resonated strongly with this group.
• Older players (ages 25+) took longer to grasp the concept of character abilities, often defaulting to playing Number Cards or Mischief Cards during their first few rounds. However, after 1-2 games, this group also began to incorporate abilities into their strategies effectively.
2. Time to Learn:
• On average, it took 2 games for individuals to fully understand the interplay between card types, Mischief effects, and character abilities. Afterward, players found the game intuitive and engaging.
3. Group Dynamics:
• Testers noted that the game excelled in creating lively, competitive group dynamics. The mix of strategy and chaos kept all players invested, even when they weren’t in the lead.
Evelyn: Tasty Travel Review
Overall, unique and interesting concept that is easy to understand. Here is some feedback to consider:
Something I would change about this game would be the path. Consider theming– latitude/longitude lines? Airplane flight paths? Also maybe bigger path with more stops? Maybe cooking tiles? Also, if you start in certain locations, you have a significant advantage
In general, we got in a pickle with ingredient possession. How do you reset? Cooking Pot? Ingredient limit in the hand?
Side quests/Objectives? Like in ticket to ride, having other objective cards that have point assignments. With the cards, consider matching the ingredient illustrations on the recipe cards
Vary the point value for the recipes.
I love the idea of a market.
Review on Zoomies (Beck)
What was the most fruatrating moment or aspect of what you just played? The game wasn’t frustrating a all.
What was your favorite moment or aspect of what you just played? I love that each of the cats habe their own capabilites.
Was there anything you wanted to do that you couldn’t? I know Beck mentioned building an actual thing for the cats to climb up on, I would love to see that.
If you has a magic wand to wave, and you could change, add, or remove anything from the experience, what would it be? I would add more aspects that you can do when you roll an odd number other than just get a treat.
What should be improved with the next version? There needs to be more variety in the cards.
Descibe the game in 3 words? Fun, risky, creative
Garden Sabtoge Review (Amber)
What was the most fruatrating moment or aspect of what you just played? The most frustring part was when we knew we were doing something wrong at first but we couldn’t figure out how exactly the game was to be played
What was your favorite moment or aspect of what you just played? I loved the ending and how the person who completes 5 objectives doesn’t necessarily win. You have to count each of your points on your onjective card at the of the game, person with the most points wins.
Was there anything you wanted to do that you couldn’t? I dont belive so.
If you has a magic wand to wave, and you could change, add, or remove anything from the experience, what would it be? I would love the Pestide to be something physical or like a card that you have to get, cause right now it’s too easy to remove the bad bugs.
What should be improved with the next version? There should be some form of reminder card as to what your three actions can be per turn.
Descibe the game in 3 words? Fun, adorable, creative
Carcassonne Review
Was it fun?
Personally, I thought this game was a lot of fun. It had a lot of strategy involved, which to me is fun.
What were the player interactions?
The player interactions includes us bartering to place pieces in certain spots if we needed them, and placing pieces in spots to make the opponent have a disadvantage.
How long did it take to learn?
This one was pretty easy to learn, but it took a while to understand how the point system worked. The farmers, roads, etc all have different values so I did not understand how bad I was doing at first.
Would you play it again?
No, simply due to the games length.
Analyze the game using the 3 act structure.
In the beginning, you start by placing your first cards and slowly start to build small structures. In the middle, you start to place bigger structures all while screwing other people over. In the end, you finish your structures and the game ends. Once you count your points, the one with the most wins.
What are the collaborative and or competitive aspects of the game?
There aren’t really any ways to collaborate other than working together with another player to finish a structure. For the competitive aspects, it is basically the same in reverse by working with players in order for someone not to finish what they were trying to build.
What is the game’s metaphor and which of the game’s mechanics standout?
The metaphor that I think of is that it is a game of life, and each tile you place represents your future. But each tile you look back on is the past, and it cannot be changed.
The game mechanics that stick out most to me are the builder pieces, which is a nice addition that makes it easier to finish structures. But also, I find it interesting how once the game is coming to an end, everyone is looking for that one specific piece they need, basically gambling on whether or not they will ever find it.
game ideas about slimes
slime war—-
the slimes are at war, and your a leader of one of the slime armies, pick up and place cards to build your army and start battles with the other waring armies. may the best slime win.
setup- 112 cads in total, max of 4 players
each player has a health pool, they start with 30 tokens in their pool. the remaining tokens can go back in the box.
each player gets a starting amount of 6 cards from the draw pile.
during your turn you can either place cards or attack( not both)
the last person with tokens left in their pool wins.
placing turn
during your turn you will be able to place cards Infront of you, you have 6 available spots to place these cards.
if you don’t like your hand you are allowed to swap a max of three of your cards, you will place each card in the discard pile and pick up one new card for each one you discard.
your cards are a mixture of different kinds of slimes : plant, fire, , poison, earth, water.
their are 3 tiers of slimes, the first tier costs nothing to place, the second tier requires 2 tier one cards of the same type to be sacrificed off the board to place, the third tier requires 2 second tier cards to be sacrificed off the board.
example of above description
when a card is sacrificed it goes into the discard pile ( optional advanced option for 2 players: when cards are sacrificed they are put into a graveyard pile and can not be used for the rest of the game.)
you can also only have one of each slime on the board, that means if you have a dragon slime on the board you cant put another one down.
attacking turn
each slime has an ability, that ability can either be attack, defense, or healing.
attack— each of these slimes will damage your opponent
when playing with more than 2 players you are able to choose who you attack during your attack turn
tier 1 (8) –2 point of damage
tier 2 (4) — 3 points of damage
tier 3 (2) — 5 points of damage
defense— each slime will defend agents damage being inflicted on you
tier 1 (4) — 1 point of damage
tier2 (2) — 2 points of damage
tier 3 (1) — 4 points of damage
some attacks and defenses will leave your opponent with an effect that lasts a few turns, the effect is described on the card that inflicts it.
tier 1 — docent have effects
tier 2 — effects last for the next 2 turns
tier 3 — effect lasts for the next 3 turns
healing— pretty self explanatory, gives you back some health points.
tier 1 (4) — 1 point of damage
tier 2 (2) — 2 points of damage
tier 3 (1) — 3 points of damage
health pool —
the health pool is full of 30 tokens at the beginning of the game. when ever you are attacked you take out the respective amount of tokens to damage taken, these are then put into the collective void.
during an attack turn you can only use your healing slimes if their are tokens in the void
the point of the health pool is have how much health your opponents have be a mystery( hopefully minimizing group targeting and allowing for a more suspenseful game with an unknown outcome.)
gooey grotto
you are an adventurer trying to get through this dungeon before the other adventurers can. each player has specific moves and abilities that can help them through the grotto, they roll dice to move through the grotto and can land on spaces that let them pick up cards to boost their abilities or give them extra abelites with a one time use. you can also set traps for other adventurers to stumble into and make them loose a turn. every turn you encounter a slime and have to roll your other die to see if you defeat that slime with your abilities, if you lose you can not roll to move and have to fight that slime every turn until you defeat it.
dungeon raid
you are a slime in the dungeons and have to defend your self from adventurers doing raids on your dungeon, this is also a cooperative game where all players work together to defeat the adventurers. each turn you pick up cards and use them to enhance your slime for battle. after each round an adventurer appears and you each take turns to deal damage to the adventurer. when the adventurer attacks you roll a dice to see if he hits or not and you all lose a point of health, with each of you being a slime you each only have 5 health points. you go until you defeat all the adventurers, their are only 7 adventurers each one harder than the last.
slime hop
slimes race to get to the end of the board by rolling dice and hopping that many spaces, some spaces have different events on them like teleporting, swapping places, going back spaces, or skipping a turn, or rolling again.
goo slime
its just go fish but with slimes, but you have to try and get a match of all 5 types of slimes.
Week 4 Game Ideas and Review
Alana Tush
Game Ideas– animal themed
- Online game where you have to take care of animals in the zoo and there are time constraints so you have to be dedicated to the game to make sure all the animals are properly fed and cared for.
- card came where each player puts down an animal card and the strongest animal wins. The cards will have a number at the top signifying how many food tokens to collect. You can feed your animals this way.
- Board game of a zoo, you travel around and have to complete a task before your next turn.
Tsuro Game Review
- Was it fun? This game was fairly fun, it wasn’t the most entertaining, but I liked how your move can sabotage other players.
- Is it interactive? Yes this game is interactive because everyone is paying attention to each players move to decide what they want to do when its their next turn
- Was it easy to learn? Yes this was easy to learn, it was a little confusing at first to know what to do when we ran out of tiles to place but we eventually got the hang of it.
- Would you replay? Yes, I would replay this game because it takes less than 20 minutes to finish the game so it doesn’t get boring once you’re stuck in the middle of the game.
- What are the collaborative and or competitive aspects of the game? The collaborative aspect is that you have to pay attention to all players tile choice to see if you have to move your piece. The game is also slightly competitive because you can place a tile that will make another players piece go off the board and lose.
- Act 1- Reading the rules, understanding how to place tiles and move along the path of the tiles, understanding what the objective is (don’t fall off the game board)
- Act 2- starting to place tiles, moving your piece, and sabotaging others paths and plans through the game
- Act 3- Starting to use strategy to eliminate other players to make it easier for you to win.
Citadels Game Review
- Was it fun? I didn’t really like this game, I guess it was fun while it lasted.
- Is it interactive? Yes this game is very interactive, players are always switching character cards and each character has a special ability to sabotage another person.
- Was it easy to learn? This was complicated to learn, you really have to pay attention to what others are doing and read the character cards so you have the best chance of having fun.
- Would you replay? No I would not replay
- What are the collaborative and or competitive aspects of the game? The competitive aspects of t he game are to sabotage another player by stealing their buildings or gold coins.
- What is the game’s metaphor and which of the game’s mechanics standout? The games metaphor was to build as many structures as possible, once you get to 8, you win. The mechanics include: placing cards, drawing cards, taking coins from the bank, paying coins to the bank, and picking cards from a communal set of character cards
- Act 1- reading rules, dealing 4 cards to each player, giving players 2 coins from the bank, separating white star cards to the side.
- Act 2- Game play- picking character cards, either taking 2 coins from the bank or picking up 2 building cards, paying the bank
- Act 3- Being competitive and sabotaging other players so they do not get 8 cards to win the game.
Review on Photosynthesis
Was it fun? Yes, but no. The game was somewhat fun once you learned what you were doing.
What were the player interactions? This game didn’t have to much interactions among the players, it was more about where you planted your trees and how fast you grew them.
How long did it take to learn? It took a very long time for us to get started, and even as we started to figure out what it was that we were supposed to be doing, we still had to pause to figure out the answers to our questions along the way. We then discovered that we were playing the game partially wrong about half way through.
Would you play it again? I may play it again, but it would depend on what other options that there are. It most likely wouldn’t be my first choice.
Analyze the game using the 3 act structure.
Act 1 – would be reading the instructions and setting up the trees, and seeds on each players board. This was a long process at first because we were not given the clearest instructions.
Act 2- We finally starting planting trees and using our light points to buy more seeds to plant more trees and buying more trees to upgrade them.
Act 3- When we finally starting to uproot out large trees for points and then we could start to see who was going to win the game.
What are the collaborative and or competitive aspects of the game? This game is more the competitive type. It’s all about where you place your trees, and how fast you grow them so you can uproot your large trees for points.
What is the game’s metaphor and which of the game’s mechanics standout? The mechanics of this game is very simillar to how it would be in reality with the rotation of the sun and planting a seed and the tree growing.
Week 3 Game Ideas: Carson Bauer
5 game ideas that involve collaboration use the following formate : [Game name] is a [category of] game in which [the players or their avatars] [do or compete or collaborate for some goal] by [using tools the game provides them].
Socialism Monopoly is a cooperative board game in which the players work together in order to make a certain amount of money in a certain amount of years (turns). The catch is that any money made by anyone is divided up evenly among players. In order to make the game more difficult, there are more fines and taxes than normal monopoly.
Hide and Creep is a moving game that is similar to hide and seek in which the players have to take turns hiding each other, trying to keep their teammates hidden from the seeker in a room. In this game though, the seeker is blind folded so your goal is to put your teammate where it is very hard for them to be found without looking. Once you are placed in a spot by your teammate, you cannot move. After 5 minutes of the game, everyone must move 5 feet in any direction, no closer or farther. This indicates the creep aspect of the game. If the game goes to 10 minutes, the hiders win and the seekers lose.
AI Pictionary is a drawing game in which partners have to work together in order to find out what the teammate is drawing. It is much like normal pictionary, but rather you have to use an AI Image generator instead of drawing, and you are not allowed to use the word you are describing in the generation description. Your team wins if they guess it in the shortest amount of time compared to the other team, and first team to 5 wins.
Bomb Squad is a cooperative card game in which players have to work together in order to “diffuse the bomb”. In each round of the game, there is one teammate who reads you the instructions off a card, and the other teammate (diffuser) has to follow the instructions and make the specific pattern out of the cards. The diffuser is not allowed to look at the instructions. The cards that the diffuser has are different color wires that have to be organized in a certain way. I’m still scratching my brain in order to figure out a unique way for the instructor to tell the diffuser the instructions, but this concept has me interested so it is going in the list. Also, can’t forget a classic timer that has the clock ticking.
Maze Runner is a cooperative “maze” / puzzle game in which the team has to ask each other trivia questions in order to move through the maze. The maze will be complex enough to make mistakes, but not too hard as to make the game impossible. The teammates must use the honor system and play fair when asking questions from the stack of cards, each having an “Easy, Medium, and Hard” question. Depending on the difficulty of the question and if it is answered right, that’s how far you will move forward. But if you get a question wrong you will move backwards.
Game Review: Forbidden Island (Carson Bauer)
Was it fun?
I do believe that forbidden island was a fun game, although it was difficult to understand at first. But after the learning curve was gone, I enjoyed playing it and avoiding the flood.
What were the player interactions?
The player interactions consisted of handing your teammates different artifacts, and moving your teammates with an action if you are able to.
Would you play it again?
I wouldn’t go out of my way to play it again, but if someone else asked me if I wanted to play it, I would play.
How long did it take to learn?
It took us about 15 minutes to understand the rules and get the game setup. After about 5 minutes of gameplay, we were more or less smooth sailing.
Analyze the game using the 3 act structure.
In the beginning, everything starts out easy and you are moving around the board to collect artifacts. Middle of the game, locations start to flood and the clock is ticking to get out. At the end of the game you get to the helicopter pickup spot, and leave the game in order to win.
What are the collaborative and or competitive aspects of the game?
The whole game is collaborative rather than competitive, since you are working together to gather all the artifacts and leave the game board. To collaborate, you can give your teammates different artifact cards in order to get 4 of the same card to collect the artifact. Once you have all 4, you can go to the landing zone and take the helicopter to leave and win.
What is the game’s metaphor and which of the game’s mechanics standout?
The metaphor to me is that you are on a “Forbidden Island” and that you aren’t allowed there so the different locations start to flood as you gather the artifacts. For the mechanics that standout, I like the aspect of the water level, and however deep the water level is is how many flood cards you have to draw, making the game move even faster and making it more intense.
Week 3 Lauren Yunk
5 Collaboration game ideas:
- Dusty Derby is a western game in which the players compete by racing to the finish line with their horse by rolling a dice but if you roll doubles you have to go back that many spaces.
- Alien Invasion is a sci-fi game in which the players must work together by battling the aliens to save the world by collecting special weapons along the way.
- Tidal Wave is an adventure game in which the players must collaborate by surfing along the wave, collecting sea artifacts, and talking to sea animals to see if you fall off your surfboard and have to start over.
- Rockstar Roulette is a pathway to fame game game where the players must compete in order to achieve their dream of becoming a future rockstar by spinning the wheel to see how many spaces you move and the spaces will have you pick up a card to determine your pathway to fame.
- Darling Dino’s is a historical game in which you are collaborating to avoid the meteor heading towards earth by rolling a dice and moving across the board while completing special tasks.
Tokaido questions
- Was it fun? – Yes I enjoyed playing
- What were the player interactions? – The player interactions were that everyone had a different character that gave them a special ability during thegame, you collected coins, food, hot springs, and more.
- How long did it take to learn? – About 15 minutes. Once w emade it to the first hotel we were all pretty comfortable with the rules.
- Would you play it again? – Yes, I thought it was very entertaining
- Analyze the game using the 3-act structure. – The beginning was learning the rules and doing a practice run of the game. The middle was actually playing the game by collecting points, gold, food, and artifects, traveling to different places, and donating to the temple til you make it to the last hotel where the game is over. The end is where you tally up all your points and see who will win the game.
- What are the collaborative and or competitive aspects to the game? – The competitive aspects were trying to collect certain artifacts and beating the opponents to different places on the map. There were no collaborative aspects in this game.
- What is the game’s metaphor and which of the game’s mechanics standout? – Tokaido doesnt have a specific metaphor but if Id have to give it one Id say it would be “Journey across Japan” because you are traveling through japan and stopping to get food and collecting many things along the way. The mechanics that relate to that metaphor would include moving your piece to travel, collceting coins at banks, and obtaining meals when you stop at the hotels.
Fluxx Questions
Was The Game Fun
Yes the game is fun only when the other players are engaged.
Would you play it again?
yes. just to be chaotic
How long did it take to learn
I played it previously so it took a few steps to bring back the memory