Category: Game Design Studio 1

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Final Thoughts On Race to 65

Race to 65 didn’t change too dramatically as it developed. Most of the core structure was there from the beginning; the main work was just tightening the rules and making sure everything felt clear and consistent. A few of the early versions had small gaps or places where players weren’t totally sure how to handle certain situations, so the updates were mostly about smoothing out those rough edges.

The biggest adjustments were clarifying how tiles flip, how players advance toward the target number, and how the end-of-game callout works. These weren’t major changes, but they helped the game run more cleanly and made the turns feel more intentional without adding complexity.

ChatGPT was helpful mostly on the documentation side—rewriting sections for clarity, keeping the terminology consistent, and making sure each version lined up with the previous one. The game itself didn’t go through big mechanical shifts, but having support to organize the rules and clean up the language made the whole process easier.

The three acts of the game are:

Act I – Getting started

The game opens in a pretty relaxed way. Players start flipping tiles, getting a feel for their numbers, and easing into the rhythm. There’s no pressure yet—just settling in and seeing how the early moves shape things.

Act II – Building toward the goal

As the game moves along, players start paying closer attention to their totals and making more thoughtful choices. It’s still simple and approachable, but you do get that feeling of trying to outpace the hourglass a little. Small decisions start to matter, and players begin watching how close everyone is getting.

Act III – Making the final call

The endgame comes into focus once players approach the target number. At this point, the game turns into a light race against time and each other—just trying to hit the number cleanly without going over. It’s not intense or heavy; it’s more like that moment in a puzzle where you can feel you’re close, and you’re trying to line everything up just right before someone else finishes.

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Playtest for Hues and Clues

  1. What was the most frustrating moment or aspect of what you just played? I honestly don’t remember feeling any frustration at all during the game.
  2. What was your favorite moment or aspect of what you just played? I think the concept was brilliant. The rules were very well thought out. Gameplay was fair, especially when players are able to score points for being ‘close enough’ in their guesses. The game is also visually appealing.
  3. Was there anything you wanted to do that you couldn’t? No, not off the top of my head.
  4. If you had a magic wand to wave, and you could change, add, or remove anything from the experience, what would it be? I could see variations of the game with different color palettes and word clues.
  5. What were the mechanics and how well did they work during your play? The mechanics were competitive and individual based. They worked well. The rules were clear and easy to follow. The pace of the game felt good.
  6. Is this a game you would play again? Absolutely. I’ve already decided that I’m going to buy the game.
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Playtest for Worldbound

  1. What was the most frustrating moment or aspect of what you just played? I feel like the gameplay still needs more hashing out. The rules are unclear for the overall game flow. There not enough details regarding collaboration between players, and the game seems to lack a clear strategy to progress toward the end game.
  2. What was your favorite moment or aspect of what you just played? I like the general idea of traveling through the world and working with fellow travelers to get home.
  3. Was there anything you wanted to do that you couldn’t do? I guess I spent most of the playing time trying to understand the overall goal of the game. It seemed like it was a mixup between a collaborative story teller game and a competitive race game.
  4. If you had a magic wand to wave, and you could change, add, or remove anything from the experience, what would it be? I would’ve like to have seen the game have more structure, with a definite pace and purpose
  5. What were the mechanics and how well did they work during your play? The mechanics of the game seemed vague
  6. Is this a game you would play again? Absolutely, in a future iteration. I really like the concept.
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Prototype – Dessert Dash

2 person game (Kaelin and Madison)

Rules:

Objective: 

Be the first to finish your stack of ice cream dishes. 

Materials:

1 deck of 60 cards

Setup: 

Shuffle the Deck and deal each player 30 cards randomly

Gameplay: 

Flip over two and place in between your deck of cards. 

There are no “turns”. The players race to be the first to finish their deck by rapidly matching either the flavor, type of dish or number of dishes on their card to the respective ones on EITHER of the cards that are flipped up in the middle. 

As the game progresses, obviously the cards will change based on what cards the players place on top. Keep placing matching cards as fast as you can, whenever you can.

Winning:

The game ends when one player finishes their stack. That player is the winner. Hooray!

Changes made:

There were edits made to the rules during prototyping to specify the simple mechanics – we had a moment that somehow the game was played but completely wrong so we tightened the wording

Changes TO make:

We’re going to tweak some of the coloring on the card to be more consistent – the blue ice cream cups threw a few people off on what type

Thoughts about Playtesting:

Most people understood the concept while one group totally didn’t so that was interesting – we clarified the rules so all people would understand. It’s interesting to see how people interpret rules or completely don’t read them when they think they know how it works.

Game Card Images:

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Game Response – The Bear “D&D” Story Game

Was it fun? Yes it was, a bit chaotic which made it enjoyable

What were the player interactions? The whole game was based off of player interactions – each player creates the personality of the game basically by how they decide to react to the storyline the “dungeon master” creates

How long did it take to learn? Not too long, as you sort of make it up as you go

What was the most frustrating moment or aspect of what you just played? We didn’t thoroughly establish each players roles so it was a little it clunky in the first half.

What was your favorite moment or aspect of what you just played? Being able to make up a story and do whatever you want under a loose structure was enjoyable – we also had good luck with the dice roll so it made it pace well

Was there anything you wanted to do that you couldn’t? Be able to tell the dungeon master not to do dumb things at times that didn’t really make sense

If you had a magic wand to wave, and you could change, add, or remove anything from the experience, what would it be? A little bit more direction for the story master to help them with the story theme

Is this a game you would play again? Maybe, it’s a bit chaotic so with the right crowd it could be more fun but it’s also a little mentally taxing and i prefer a little more mechanics and “gameplay” per say in my games

Analyze the game using the 3 act structure: Act 1 was determining each bears’ role in the game and making it out of “the forest”. Act 2 was healing some people from injuries and infiltrating Comic-Con and the guarded room (with lots of dice-rolling). Act 3 was then getting home where it all went downhill and our dungeon master called the whole military on us.

What are the collaborative and or competitive aspects of the game? Very collaborative, everyone is working together to complete the story, almost no competitiveness

What is the game’s metaphor and which of the game’s mechanics standout? Metaphor was a family of bears and you come up with the context, ours became a mafia gang – having very little mechanics was the most unique mechanic because the players determined what you actually had to do in the game

Describe the game in 3 sentences or in the form of a haiku:

Bear gangs fighting crime
Infiltrating Comic-Con
Betrayal and chaos

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Weeks 12-13 Question Sets

Question Set 1

  1. Working prototypes are intended for evaluation by playtesters and potential publishers, while display prototypes, with finished art and components, are intended for the eyes of distributors or chain buyers.
  2. Publishers want to see a clean, playable prototype. The game needs a clear set of rules so that playtesters can properly test the game. Without rules, the working prototype fails.
  3. According to Dale Yu, prototypes should look clean and well-made for a good first impression. Rules should be clear and correct, maybe even with diagrams and pictures to help first-time players understand how the game works. Components like cards, card sleeves, stickers, and paper are essential to make a clean game. Finally, he says if you want people to get excited about a game, send them home with a full, playable copy of it so they can play on their own time. 
  4. Richard Levy’s first piece of advice is to be prepared. He also says to remember that information is power, meaning you should research the company you are publishing to and try and find other inventors to talk to about your game. He suggests selling yourself first and handling rejection well. Keeping your ego in control and having realistic expectations for a presentation. Finally, he suggests that inventors do multiple submissions of a game (revisions) and keep in mind how a trademark can impact their game being published.
  5. Pitching your game to small to mid-sized publishers in the hobby games industry is a suggested route to take.
  6. Publishers look for the fun factor, player interaction, immediacy of play, strategy, an interesting theme, an immersive experience, an interrelated theme, solid, innovative rules and mechanics, easily manufactured components, compatibility with other products, the correct target market, a good title, expansion potential, multi-language capability, easy demoing, and collectibility only if necessary.
  7. A good set of rules usually includes these subheaders: Overview, Components, Setup, Gameplay, Card types, Endgame and winning, Example of play/strategy hints/optional rules/game variants/glossary, and Credits.

Question Set 2

  1. The best game I made this semester, personally, was Headlampers. Headlampers is a board game in which the players take turns mining for ores by rolling dice and sabotaging their opponents with wild cards. The goals of the game are to end the game with the most points by collecting ores that will help you reach that goal, and attempting to lower the score of other players by drawing wild cards to sabotage opponents. In the event of a tie, a “pickaxe duel” must take place. Whoever rolls the higher number with the two dice is the true winner. The game is different each time, since tiles are detachable and randomized before each new round. Ore values are 1-5, 1 being the worst and 5 being the best. There are also bombs hidden within the board that have a value of -3. Wild cards occupy about 35%-40% of the board, and they prompt players to choose another to skip a turn, steal ores, or roll again, to name a few. Within playtesting, audiences liked the brevity and simplicity of the game. They liked how they didn’t need to use a ton of brain power, especially early in the morning.
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Reactor 21 – Game Review

  1. I enjoyed Reactor 21 a lot. While the mechanics foil down to basic Blackjack, the mechanics added to the base game allow the concept of Blackjack to take an entirely new shape.
  2. Every decision needed a debate in Reactor 21 because the game is quite unforgiving. In our test, we had to make it slightly easier to account for the bad card luck.
  3. As someone who understood blackjack, it made understanding this game easier. However, Reactor 21 adds much more meta-game to the original blackjack formula, which took a bit to learn.
  4. The game, like blackjack, is entirely luck based. However, Reactor 21 gives you some breathing room to make mistakes and forces you to make otherwise bad decisions to risk reward.
  5. The stress of each decision and relief of a card that saved the game made the setting so much more real. It almost felt like we were balancing real nuclear reactors. The game does really well in balancing risk and allowing players to take risks to get a better result.
  6. A problem we ran into was not enough chances to recover in the event of too many “dead draws”. Even if you played perfectly, you could draw a max of 3 bad cards before you lose. This made the game really tough to win. We then expanded the limit of “instability” points to allow more breathing room.
  7. In my opinion. All the game needs is some theming and places to put points.
  8. Yes. Even for non-blackjack players, I think the game stands well enough on its own to be a complex game of risk and luck that requires decisions at every turn.
  9. In act one, players draw their first card and need to choose which reactor to add it to. In the second act, players have stabilized their reactors or have rising instability (depending on their luck). By the third act players need to make tough calls to balance their reactors.
  10. The game is entirely collaborative. A decision can greatly change the outcome of the game in the unforeseeable future, meaning every move counts. We were excited to see cards and devastated when we drew bad ones.
  11. The game has a nice theme about balancing nuclear reactors that are one wrong move away from destruction. I am not sure if any other game could highlight that stress as much as blackjack. The gameplay and setting blend seamlessly I’m my opinion.
  12. Hectic. Hard. Chance.