Category: Game Design Studio 1

Posted on

Divided (Mia and Clay)

2 players

  • Objective: Collect more pairs than your opponent as fast as you can over the course of 5 rounds
  • Required materials:
    • 1 deck of cards
      • Remove face cards and jokers
  • Setup:
    • Each player is dealt 6 six cards to start
  • On a player’s turn
    • The player with the least amount of pairs goes first
    • You can’t look at your hand until you draw your first card
  • On a player’s turn:
    • Draw a card
    • Your “turn” is over once you have drawn
      • You may draw immediately after your opponent has drawn
  • At any time:
    • Place a pair in front of you. A pair consists of:
      • Two cards that are cleanly divisible (eg. 3/9, 10/10, A/7)
        • Aces are worth 1 and any card is divisible by it (Wild card)
  • Ending the round:
    • The round ends when either player has no cards remaining in their hand
    • Players write down how many pairs they have played in front of them
  • Winning the game
    • After 5 rounds, players sum up their total number of pairs from the course of the game
    • The player with the most pairs wins
Posted on

Thoughts on Captains Lost Treasure

Playtest for – Captain’s Lost Treasure

What was the most frustrating moment or aspect of what you just played? 

Slow pacing – Turns seemed to go on for a while
Unbalanced HP/ATK for crew members 

What was your favorite moment or aspect of what you just played?

I liked the concept of the game, and attacking other players ships/crew members

Was there anything you wanted to do but couldn’t? 

It would have been nice to have the ability to be more aware of other players ATK/HP (might be hard to implement in a draft but the idea of a slider or spinner on cards that shows the stats – the player sheets are nice to keep track but not super easy when trying to read other players)

If you had a magic wand to wave, and you could change, add, or remove anything from the experience, what would it be?

Balance out the ATK/HP 

How has the experience changed since the first play test?

N/A 

Is this a game you would play again? Why?

Yes, I enjoyed the concept of the game and think  it sounds fun, numbers just need adjusting. 

Posted on

Thoughts on… Everything… Finally

Fluxx

I enjoyed playing Fluxx, but only after I started to learn how to play. I like the idea of matching cards and that it has an equal balance of random and strategy. I enjoyed having the new rule cards show up but it does make the game feel pretty cluttered when it really gets going; especially with 6 people playing. That feeling of clutter makes me want to play the game less/want the game to end as soon as possible so it can go back to normal. It did certainly provide me with a lot of inspiration for my game

Love Letter

I immediately enjoyed the storyline of Love Letter but I think the mechanics were a bit clunky for me to understand. It didn’t make a ton of sense to me that each player was a suitor, but had cards with different characters on them. It created a disconnect that was maybe only mostly apparent to me. However, once I learned how it worked, I did begin to enjoy playing. I’m just not sure it would be something I would come back to again.

Munchkin Gloom

This was the first of the games that I was not able to play due to 2 close exposures to covid, so from here on most of my thoughts will come from the perspective of game reviews I watched in place of playing the games.

I really like the transparent cards with the ability to place others on top of each other and the idea story-wise that happiness is bad and gloom is good. It also seems that a lot of the actions are very direct and player-focused. It also seems to poke fun at popular video games and Dungeons and Dragons. I love games that have player-to-player interactions that can cause fun conflict in the room, and Gloom Munchkin certainly does that. If I had the chance to play it I think I would enjoy it.

Munchkin

Munchkin seems to be a relatively simple game with dungeoning and treasure-gathering. The class and race system is really interesting too, being able to be any combination of class and race. In terms of the combat, It’s seems it’s similar to Dungeons and Dragons in the sense that when a monster appears, you fight it. Additionally, your combined levels must be the same or higher in order to fight/defeat the creatures, and it even incorporates bonus for different abilities. I really like that if you don’t meet the combined level of the monster that you can run away if you roll a 5-6, but if you land on anything other than 5-6, you have “bad stuff” happen to you. I wasn’t able to play this game this semester but I was able to play in 4D studio a couple of semesters ago and I enjoyed it!

Bang!

I think the character and role cards not being attached is a fun way of keeping the story of the game fresh as there are many different combinations and can change the storyline for players. It’s also cool that it’s a team-based game based around eliminating other players as opposed to points or score that determine who wins. I also always like games that are designed to start mini conflicts between the players. Bang does this by making it a mystery what team each player is on. I also think it’s really cool that you can get into duels with other players.

Pandemic

Pandemic is another one of the games that I wasn’t able to play but I did watch a few videos on. I think that a face value, the game can come off a tad overwhelming, at least for me as someone who isn’t incredibly well-versed or experienced with board games. It does seem to simplify itself just a bit more as the rules become more apparent. The role cards are also interesting, giving players an added ability each unique to themselves which provides players with a sense of purpose. I also like that the different regions on the map all foster the growth of different kinds of diseases specific to the region. It’s also cool that you can move around the map, essentially controlling the spread of disease through your presence there as a researcher/doctor or whatever. I also have to give an honorable mention to the infection rate mechanic, which allows players to choose the difficulty level of the game.

Tokaido

I wasn’t able to play Tokaido. but based on the reviews that I watched, I think the first mechanic that caught my interest was how the players move around the board. Players can move as far forward as they want and get ahead of the others, but they can only move forward once they are the farthest back in the group. I have to say though, I don’t think that I would really enjoy playing this game, despite the beautiful presentation, because of the currency system. I have never really enjoyed using currency to trade or purchase items in card games. I’m not sure if there is a reason behind it, but it just doesn’t always make a ton of sense to me if it’s not done in a specific way.

8 Minute Empire

I like the idea of the game being completed in 8 minutes. I find that when I am playing board games, it’s usually to quickly pass time when my friends and I are bored or waiting for something. 8 mins is the perfect amount of time for a fast game to to take place. It’s interesting that you basically start the game with everything you’ll ever need; i.e. 8 money, 3 cities, and a bunch of armies. It’s nice that once the money is spent, the money goes into the bank, which also means it doesn’t return back into the game. The territorial control of moving armies around an establishing cities almost as spawn points is also a cool mechanic. It seems like based on the videos that I have watched, there isn’t much player to player interaction which is kind of unfortunate so I would at least try to play this game if given the opportunity, but it may get boring for me after a while.

Hanabi

I really like the idea of Hanabi, trying to set off fireworks. The first thing that’s jarring is that you actually hold your cards backwards instead of directed towards yourself. So everyone can see your cards except for you. I have to say though, despite Hanabi being a seemingly simple and small game, I don’t really enjoy games with point values and a goal to reach a certain amount of points. I would prefer if players were trying to get a certain object or amount of objects, whatever it may be. Not too much to say about it.

Carcassonne

To start, I really like the idea of building the map together as a group, even though the goal is to take as much control of as much land as possible. I’m not a fan of the fact that they add up to points at the end, but that’s just the way it is. I think Carcassonne has a great of making players interact with one another by restricting the placement of certain players’ pieces on occupied sections of the board, but players can strategize to share sections of the board if placed correctly. I also like that the scoring is done through a different board and matches the theme of the main game “board.”

Dominion

I was able to play Dominion a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to finish the game but we did eventually score it at the end and declared a winner. I personally don’t like deck builder games. They just don’t really keep my attention like a game with a nicely designed board/map, whatever it may be. This also ties into my small but general distaste for card games with currency. Being able to see where the money is going and it getting recycled kind of kills the magic for me. Overall, though, the game is well made and works with a small amount of players. However, if we didn’t have Ames there to help us get the hang of it, I’m not sure we would have been able to learn it very quickly.

Photosynthesis

Visually, Photosynthesis is a striking game that I can imagine would pull players in and immerse them. However, I wasn’t able to play, so I’m only speculating. At first glance in the videos I have watched, it seems very complicated with tons of different chips, pieces, currency, etc. I think there is a lot to remember, such as point value, amount of spaces a shadow is cast, point trackers, light points, etc. While the game is visually one of the best I’ve seen, it’s more or less a no-go for me.

Takenoko

I enjoyed playing Takenoko, mostly because of the story line, but after opening the rules, it got complicated. Myself, Clay, and Max all did find ourselves getting the hang of the game, but were asking a lot of questions like can we take the bases of the bamboo shoots, does irrigation apply if not connected, etc. We also didn’t really use the player cards to track what was going on, which may have contributed to our general sense of confusion for a majority of the game. We did start implementing some strategy in the later game, but that was only after a pretty slow start at the beginning.

Settlers of Catan

I personally don’t enjoy resource management games. I’ve experienced some pretty intense games that use this as a main mechanic in their games like EU4, CK2, and other video games that take politics, war, resources, etc into account. Settlers of Catan is WAY simpler than those other games that I mentioned, but it generally has a similar feel and just isn’t really up my alley.

Splendor

This is going to sound incredibly redundant but because I don’t like games that involve buying and selling cards with currency, I have to say I’m glad I didn’t play Splendor. While I’ll admit it does have a cool premise, I just am not immediately interested in points and money for physical games. The game also has a lot to remember in terms of how many gems you can pick up and what controls that number, which can get confusing. I don’t like how everything changes based on player count, meaning that every time you play, unless your group is consistent, the rules are all different. This makes it difficult to learn.

Bohnanza

I really like Bonanza! I’ve been able to play it a couple times in both Game Design and in 4D studio. The game provides a lot of player-to-player interaction with trading being one of the most important things you can do. It adds strategy to a simple game with simple mechanics and is easily learned and taught. Also, the art is really nice to look at and is just overall a lot of fun to play. I also am pretty good at it so that adds to it a bit too.

Posted on

Kobold Guide to Game Design: Part 2 (The Play Narrative)

A. Strategies for My Game:

A1. My Preferred Mechanics: Winning/Losing Conditions, Spinning, Rolling (Dice for Luck), Turning-over (uncovering face-down decks), Moving (forward & backward), and Puzzling (info matching).

A2. Game Targets: Role-Play Collaborators (Enemies and Allies), Group Solutions Multiplayers

A3. Possible Game Analyst(s): Sentry Media Club Members who enjoy almost any type of game challenge.

B. Game Perspectives:

B1. The Easiest Game to Start with (free of instructions): My Tom (Mobile Game) has the smoothest playable experience because it is a causal form of the game and also it is just about the simple strategic gameplay of taking care of him (Tom). He can grow at any level which indicates his physical growth (even though it is mostly invisible), he also has birthdays.

B2. Own Thoughts of a Game: The game is a playable asset that contains logical approaches and usually renewable background stories that keep players to be engaged and oftentimes free of boredom and tiredness.

B3. Understandable and Sensible Game Approaches: Create Illustrations (sketching some imperfect figures, objects, & optional backgrounds) for the ideas of my own game in my sketchbook (especially if some ideas are card games or possibly boardgames); think like an imaginative narrator towards my hobbies and unforgettable experiences in my past life events (Ex: I love ice-skating, initiative volunteering for other organizations, and I rode skateboarding in my childhood, and I enjoy playing adventurous games and rhythmic entertainment like Beatstar). It is a bonus point if I could create some storyboards to aid my thinking of how to construct the game which acts like a narrative film to appeal to an audience with some interesting moments. Thinking about how I achieve the goal and with what kinds of strategies and how I can display my creative decision on encountered issues to engage others? In other words, fictionalizing your life narration into the crafts that the audience can discover by gaming.

C. Gateway Game Structures:

C1. Top Gateway Game: I don’t have any favorites for the gateway game (I am a video gamer informally), however during the first 5 weeks when I play with others socializing games (during class), I am more towards some games that have the mechanics of moving forward & backward, building puzzles and simple adventurous strategies.

C2. Characteristics of Gateway Game: Gateway games are multiplayer gameplay that involves competitions between players or collaborative players. This kind of physical game is casual playing that covers tons of strategies and usually takes extensive time to get results of winning and losing outcomes.

D. Ten Beautiful Mechanics & Which/How They Could Suit My Game Pieces :

Top 10 (Source: mobilefreetoday): Tapping, Stacking, Turning, Dexterity, Rising/Falling, Swerving, Merging, Idle, Growing, Puzzling.

Possible Fitting Movements for Prototypes: Tap Mechanics come up with unexpected outcomes for any player’s action input which is suitable for role-playing survival games in simple structures like my playable wireframe of Compass 4 Survivalist because it requires both players to spin seeing the situation they are in at. Stacking Mechanics could be applied to card games since it requires amounts of each card to achieve successful outcomes. Turning Mechanics is oftentimes used in Boardgame because it requires the four directions of game piece roaming, examples including treasure hunting games. Merging Mechanics is best used in graphics and words puzzle since some of the alphabet or graphics can match specific requirements of the game rules.

E. Matters of Luck & Strategy:

Even though the playable game should have some paths that players can take to get successful outcomes and rewards to encourage them to keep up the pace and feedback to them about each decision players will take whether it is the win or lost fate, some settings need to contain unexpectedness and invisibility to challenge players and force them to come up with solutions which can eliminate their opportunity to overcome the hardships of the upcoming barriers — the established luck which players won’t be seen and controlled is the keystone of a game.

Posted on

Kobold Guide to Game Design: Part 1 (What Makes a Good Game?)

What should every game have?

I think the game must be attractive in terms of visual graphic interests and the unexpected challenges for each play but not too much; the most effective approach to enhance player engagement in gameplay is to set each stage in a single game round so that players can feel gradually about the enhancing difficulties during the gaming.

Games I owned (currently playing)? I play video games in a variety of genres (when my mom is not around since she hates video games):

Action: Temple Run, Temple Run 2, Subway Surf

Strategy & Narration: My Tom, Deemo II

Rhythmic Beats: Beatstar, Spin Rhythm

Three-act Structure of My Favorite Game and Pacing:

Action and Rhythm Genres: it is functioned by stage of difficulty as I play the game further.

Beatstar (my favorite list so far) lets me play all the difficulty levels (normal, hard, extreme) of all songs, each song contains 5 stages (easy to the challenging part — speeds and beat blocks will increase and contains more challenging postures), and unlock more songs by playing songs based on higher scores and frequency of playing.

 Coming up with Ideas with Metaphor or the Mechanic?

I think mechanic matters more than metaphor because the game is the story platform that requires players to be engaged or somewhat that let players be involved in the narrative settings, or even players create a story. The player is a key cast in a game in terms of completing the process of gaming. Although the metaphor is a rule set that can determine the quality of the game, it is not the first step because sometimes not all similar rules are applied to the same or different games.

Ideal Potential Player(s)?

I have no preference about who I would like to collaborate with because I would like to learn their different aspects of approaching the game design solutions.

Posted on

Part 3 Questions

  1. What is the difference between a game designer and a game developer? What commonly occurs during the game development process? 

 A game designer is the person that comes up with the idea or inspiration for the game and the developer is the person that takes these ideas and creates a finished product. Usually the developer will play test the game and write down any questions they may have to fully grasp the game. They would then break down the game and look further into the mechanics that the game uses and makes sure that each are necessary so the players dont get to confused. Then they would go more into depth with the rules, title and theming of the game.   

  1. what are the challenges of balancing a game? What should every player of your game believe? Why? How can you avoid stealing players’ fun?

One chanllage can be number, meaning to have multiple components to keep the game fun and interesting, However if you have to many components the game can be confusing and also introduce a number if different possible interactions with other players. Each player should feel that they have an equale chance to win the game when given a rule set. As well as having the players believe they can win before the game ends. This also goes into how to avoid stealing a players fun. You can avoid this by not kicking the player out of the game before its over. Some games you can already tell your gonna lose before the game is even over and that isnt fun at all. Also to avoid a kingmaking, which is a player that can choose someone to win but not choose themselves. Another rule is not reward the leader, someone shouldnt have the best position just because they went first. 

  1. What 10 maxims should you follow when writing rules? 

Use real words, Make no more extra work than necessary, Add flavor, Make your text no smarter than your readers, Discard rules that cant be written, Take a breath, Go easy on the eyes, Get your final version playtested and Fix it in the FAQ

  1. How has play testing changed your game? Who from class would you like to playtest your next game or version 2 of your first game? who is the audience for your game? 

Play testing has changed the game I had a ton. I remember making my dad read my rule set and had him set it up and explain it back to me. Right from the start I could already tell stuff is wrong. I had to go back and rewrite rules and make things a little more clear. I even ended up scapping an entire mechanic by having him play a couple of rounds. I got a version I was happy with and I had my classmates test it and even still there were issues that needed to be fixed. Like some how everyone kept ruling evens which had them fight “boss” cards which had a higher health bar and most of the players didnt have a weapon in time to even have a chance of beating it. Two players ended up getting out rather quickly while the other two had a slow end, in which they didnt even win and they both ended up getting out too. The people I would like to test for my next game is, Ronan, River, Clay, Delany and Max. Ive tested with this group before and they all give good feed back on the game play as well as ways to change it if needed. For my next game, the audience im targeting is mainly 12+, its going to be a trivia/memory game. 

5. Who should playtest your game outside of class?

 I would have my brother who is 15, my dad who is 46 and my sister who is 29.  I feel that they would be honest about stuff that wouldn’t work in my game as well as they all are in different age groups.

Posted on

DISASTERS Rename & Update to “BLAST RADIUS”

I have spent time today in class making changes to my game, which was previously called “DISASTERS” and has now been changed to “BLAST RADIUS.” The original name was a working title as the original concept of the game was to have multiple different “disasters” that could be chosen from to change the story of the game. However, I found that the complexity that this added wasn’t really worth the amount of work that it would take to make different cards for different decks. I doubled down on the nuclear reactor explosion as the disaster, hence the name change.

I also spent time putting all of the possible items that can be drawn into a spreadsheet to manage the balance for further play-testing. The screenshot of what that looks like and how it was organized is below.

Balance sheet as of 11/01/2022

I also spent a bit of time in class designing proofs for the backs of the item cards and objective cards to see what a final version of the cards might look like. Those images are also below.

Let me know what you think 🙂

Posted on

Game Reviews (Tester) for Peers’ Playable Prototypes (by Benjamin Zou)

Luck of the Flip

The challenging part of the game: Deciding who needs to be put back (player vs other players)

The Surprising Moment of the gameplay: When I move forward to a special spot, it encourages me to jump to multiple spots and some spot is the turning area of the back or forth by Rock-Paper-Scissors (win to proceed, lose to backward). However, it is hard to see clear text on the board (it may be a bit crowded).

Rule Modifications for the game (recommendations for switching, adding, or removing): I would suggest placing more blank spaces to relieve tension. There is a relationship conflict between bad luck and winning the spot.

Impression of the Game: I feel like this game is about the luck of moving forward.

Replaying Willingnesses (Enjoyments of the Game): I enjoy each player’s fate proceeding forward randomly according to the automatic circumstances like dice. I think this is a great gameplay of the life situation.

Captain’s Lost Treasure

The challenging part of the game: Determine each other’s role to gain richness

The Surprising Moment of the gameplay: The Bonus is the core direction for each role & the turn of order is based on the length of each player’s full name.

Rule Modifications for the game (recommendations for switching, adding, or removing): It is hard to finish the game because there are too many golds and other applied rule conditions, so I would recommend simplifying the explanation about each other’s roles and approaches with indicating how many crew members each player have.

Impression of the Game: I think this game is about the quantity of the crew on each boat and how each boat competes for wealth

Replaying Willingnesses (Enjoyments of the Game): I enjoy the difficulties that boat crews are going to face, and how they become rich by fighting the wealth.

Posted on

Pentago Game Review

After playing Pentagon, I really enjoyed it. As the box indicates, it is very quick to pick up and similar enough to tic tac toe which everyone has played. One connection that isn’t very similar that I would make is chess. Chess requires you to think multiple steps ahead of your opponent and challenges you to see every single possibility. This is something I found in Pentago. Being a very competitive person as well, I enjoyed the idea that it was me vs the other person, and that it is in a sense who is smarter or who is thinking further down the line in terms of moves.

I am definitely going to purchase this game and give it to my dad as a Christmas gift because he is the logical type that would obsess over a game like this with friends and family.

Posted on

Rules V4

The goal is to be the first person with cards 0-9 all in the same color in there hand wins.

Requires a deck of uno cards

Set up

  • 3 -4 players
  • Remove all wild and blank cards
  • Remove
  • Deal each player 3 cards
  • The tallest player goes first

There are 24 red cards, 24 blue cards, 24 green cards, and 24 yellow cards

Turn

  • Each turn a player will draw one card from the deck.
  • Players can get rid of cards by giving them to another player.
  • Each turn players can use one card from there hand to affect play
  • If any player ends up with no cards they can draw 3 cards from the deck

Used cards are returned to the bottom of the deck.

The first person with cards 0-9 all in the same color in there hand wins..

  • Reverse cards are used to reverse the turn order.
  • Skips are used to skip the next players turn
  • +2’s take 2 random cards from any one player if no player has 2 or more cards draw 2 card from the deck
  • +4’s take 4 random cards from any one player if no player has 4 or more cards draw 4 card from the deck
  • 0’s moves 5 cards from the players hand to the hand of a player of their choice.
  • 1’s are used to move all players hands one person to the right.
  • 7’s allow the player to swap hands with one player of their choice.
  • All other numbered cards move the same number of cards as the number on the cards to the hand of the player on the right.

Reverse’s players took turns in a clockwise direction now go counterclockwise

+two’s take two random cards from another player

+four’s take four random cards from another player

Skips next player skips there turn

Numbered cards move that number of cards one person to the right

Ones all players mover there hands one person to the right

Sevens swap hands with one player

Zero’s move 5 cards to the hand of another player

Posted on

Thoughts on some games that I played:

Flux (Zombie)

  • I had previously played the base game of Flux last semester and I had enjoyed what I played. The idea that the rules continually shift as the game progresses interested me. This was my first time playing the Zombie version. One thing that I did not like was the pacing of the late game. Everyone took a long time to reacclimate to rule changes and to consider their options which made it boring to wait for your next turn. Our group made an adjustment for the subsequent playthrough that I deemed “Speed-Flux”. I started a 20 second timer on my phone and each player had exactly that long to complete their turn. This was especially frantic because sometimes you would draw a card that you were not familiar with that had a lot of text that you would need to read so this rule forced you to skim read in order to complete your turn. The chaos that this created was fun although I think a slightly longer timer would be good if it was being used in a more serious setting.

Love Letter

  • This game was great! We got a grasp of the rules really quickly and were underway within a minute. On the first turn I had two of the highest ranked cards, meaning that I was forced to play one of them which is an automatic loss, however I was not perturbed by this because the length of the round is so quick. I particularly liked the strategy element of deductive reasoning trying to figure out what card your opponent(s) have.

Munchkin Gloom

  • I have played the original Munchkin game in the past although it has been at least several years since then. This was my first time playing the “Gloom” variant. The most notable thing about this game is the quality of the cards. These things are awesome! The transparent plastic lines up when you stack the cards on top of each other to make adding up character stats very easy. In terms of gameplay, there was some confusion and frustration within my group regarding the objective. By the time we were underway, people seemed to be mostly over this game. I think this would have especially benefited from having one person in the group who has played before, and I would be open to trying to play again, although my group only had the one playthrough. 

Tokaido

  • This game was especially unique compared to what we have played this semester. Players progressed across the board and stopped wherever they chose in order to collect cards, money, and other such things. No one was exactly sure what the winning strategy would be for this so all players seemed to focus on different things. Although players are competing against each other, it usually didn’t seem to make sense to pursue the same objectives, like for example, the panels. If one player had already collected two out of four of the panels, other players were disincentivized from trying to collect them as well because only the first player to complete it would score the bonus. Perhaps a more obvious strategy would arise given the opportunity to play this game more than just the one time. Overall, in my opinion, it wasn’t very fun although the cool theme did make up for this slightly.

Dominion

  • We played an abbreviated version of this game, having only cheap cards available to purchase and stopping before even reaching the endgame. From what I saw of this, I really liked the concept. The idea of making choices to build a deck from cards that are available to all of the players is very interesting. I also really like the progression of currency where later in the game, it becomes possible to get cards that are worth more. I especially like that you can replay this game with different cards available because this opens up so much in the way of replayability. 

Takenoko

  • I am still not entirely sure that we played this correctly. The premise of this game is that players build out the board and grow bamboo that is later collected and used to score points. It was never clear what the dominant strategy was for this game. Points could also be scored based on score layout so depending on the state of the board, you could draw a card that immediately scores points. I would be interested to see this game played out multiple times to see what the average number of tiles that are played is. I couldn’t tell if our game would have been more fun if we spent more time placing tiles or less. Overall, this is another game with a fun theme that I am not totally sold on mechanically yet.

Bang

  • This game combined a lot of elements from previous games that I had played including hidden roles, drawing cards and hand management, and special character abilities. I particularly enjoyed the theme of the country western art and having text written in the Italian language in addition to English. An enjoyable development that happened in our playthrough of the game was that players would attack each other for fun, even if they knew that their roles were working towards the same goal. Having people be “traitors” was honestly very on brand for the game theme and it made gameplay seem a little more intense because it was every person for themselves.

Splendor

  • The premise of collecting gems and accumulating points with the cards in the middle is very simple but . I found this game interesting because every player has an equal opportunity (at least in the start of the game) to pick whatever they would like. As the game progressed, certain gems would get kind of gridlocked because two players were both trying to collect that color but neither had enough to score in order to return theirs to the circulation. Multiple people in the class have games that involve collecting resources and crafting so I highly recommend that others try this out to at least get a sense of it.
Posted on

Cardisaur Rules

  • Setup
    • You have a deck (likely 52 just for consistency) of dirt cards. The back is, well, dirt. The other side has a mechanic. Mix them about the table, blank side up. Try to keep it about two cards high, but it’s dirt, so there will be some overlap. The dinosaur “skeleton” can go anywhere that so pleases the players.
  • Objective(s)
    • The goal is to trick families and social groups into spending time with each other and building a fun, informative sculpture. 
  • Actions players take
    • In clockwise order from the oldest player, players select a card of their liking to excavate. Upon picking that card, they can either be greeted by a dinosaur bone, a mechanic, or just more dirt. Each bone gets added to the skeletons, and rewards the player one million dollars. The instruction booklet will show you where to put it, and give you some fun facts about it. Mechanics can prompt other actions (excavate an adjacent dirt, lose a turn, draw again) and dirt does nothing. You’re not going to find something every time. Real archaeologists almost never find something.
  • Ending the game (win, lose states)
    • I don’t think you can lose Cardisaur, I think you can just not be the person who completes the dinosaur. I think everyone wins because now you have a cool dinosaur sculpture. What I could do – in a world where I add a monetary value to the bones – is make players pay to excavate. Maybe everyone starts with 5 million. I just don’t want to turn it into a competition. It’s a fun little silly dinosaur game.
Posted on

Romito Soccer Dart Prototype Concept

If you have ever seen a dart board, just imagine that in 10x the size and kicking a soccer ball instead of throwing a dart. That is already a game that exists, but what I wanted to do is create a smaller version of this game that is portable and fun for friends to break out quickly. It is a game that is similar to flick football with paper, but in this case the board is made out of velcro and comes with a soccer ball made out of velcro.

Each player gets three tries to flick the mini soccer ball at the target. The target has 5 possible zones to hit with points ranging from 1-10. For reference see my wall section in the classroom.