Garden Sabotage Documentation

Rule Set 1

The changes that I made from the first version to this version include:

adding the pesticide cards as a tangible form to get rid of the bugs
Making good bug cards worth more since they are so rare in the deck as well as adding more
Adding a Golden Watering Can card that gives the first player to reach 5 objective cards more points
Making it 5 cards to trigger the final round instead of 7
Clarifying some areas of the rules, particularly with discarding cards, the amount of plants you can plant in your garden per turn, and what plant is eaten by a bug
Adding the option to dig up the plants in your garden
Action reminder cards that you can refer to throughout the game
Incorporated a game board into the rules that would have specific places for the cards so that it doesn’t get confusing

Actually design the game board with the different spots for the cards, making the setup easier and adding to the game’s aesthetics
Maybe add a spot for the bug cards on the player mats
Get rid of the two face-up bug cards, as it makes it too easy to sabotage and get exactly the bug card you want
Clarify and simplify the rules further. For instance, clarifying the pesticide rules and that the order you lay down your cards on the player mat doesn’t matter.
Design my cards myself, by hand, instead of the placeholder AI generated art (most likely a stippling style, undecided if I would do color or not)
Add names on the backs of the cards so that the stacks of cards are more easily identifiable or adding the name on the game board itself
Add more instructions on the cards themselves (like what happens with a bug card or pesticide card)
Add point values onto the good bug cards so players don’t just need to refer to the rules
Maybe have a way to protect certain plants/flowers in your garden
Maybe rename the plant cards to be flower cards?

I learned a lot from playtesting this game. I realized that there is a need to clarify and simplify some the rules more. I thought I had a pretty solid set of rules until it was playtested and the group didn’t really understand it.
Along with that, I also learned that I really needed to distill some of the information for players since the game is complicated with the amount of actions you can take on each turn. This is why I created the action reminder cards.
I thought that the players generally seemed to have a pretty good time playing this game. The player’s interaction with sabotaging others’ gardens with bugs was a mechanic that players really seemed to like.
I would like to continue refining this game at some point, but I likely will do that in the future, but not too much more during this class. I think that it is a pretty solid game idea and I have a lot of the rules and mechanics worked out to the way I want them to be, but I feel as though this isn’t the most original idea for a game. However, I think this game has a lot of potential for the design aspect of it, and I am really really into drawing bugs and plants lately.