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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 🙂

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.
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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.
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Site Review 2 – Joseph Espinoza

For my second site review I went with the website Redis.Agency: https://www.redis.agency/?ref=onepagelove. I. chose this website as it was the most unique website that I have ever seen. With the creative usage of color where there are only 4 colors, red, white, black, and green. Using black as the background and using the color red a few times, giving it more emphasis when present. The color white is used on the type and the color green is used around the border of the page, giving it a sense of contrast from the red. One thing I found very interesting about the page was the concept of infinitely scrolling down or up, the page is set up to never have an end or beginning as it keeps going in a loop. It was very confusing at first as it looked like the content was repeating until I hit realization that it was a loop after scrolling for a few minutes. I think the website was done very well and the concept of scrolling for ever is unique, however it would be nice to know that it is scrolling in a loop as it can be confusing at first. Another thing that the website did well was the usage of simplicity as the background is pure black and the text being in the center and being the color white really makes the text pop and show importance as it create contrast.

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Site Review 1 – Joseph Espinoza

For my first site review, I decided to go with the Nike website and the product that I put on the cart were a pair of soccer cleats (Nike Tiempo Legend 9 Elite). The overall process was very smooth and simple, which was expected from a big company. The way that the website is designed creates is very nice from a design point of view, where on the middle top of the page it has different options, splitting up genders and ages, and once hovering over select gender or age, a set of drop down options appear, allowing the viewer to select the desired products. On the right side of the page it has a search option, a favorite item viewer, and the cart. The cart system was done well, allowing the viewer to see how many items they have in the cart with a number in the middle of the cart icon. However, I did see a possible issue with the cart icon, where it could be mistaken for another icon from the view of a newer user of the internet as it is not the iconic shopping cart icon, instead it is a handbag icon. From this website, I find myself using the simplistic style of the website in my homepage as I find it very appealing.

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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.

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Week 5 Games

Bonanza – 8/10

Beans are funny. I have no clue why they didn’t call this one Beananza. Anyway. I think I would go on record as saying that I think games that take a while are fun, and Bonanza was no exception. The idea of assigning rarities to beans is funny, and most of the art was too. Good game. 

King of Tokyo – 6/10

I didn’t get to play much of this game, but I like fighting and I like winning – which I did.  I don’t really see a point for it, as if I wanted to fight monsters I’d just get action figures. And be ten.

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Kubold Kuestions Three

What is the difference between a game designer and a game developer?

When I think game designer, I think of someone making a board game. Can you call that analog? When I think game developer, I think computers.

What commonly occurs during the game development process?

Multiple steps backwards.

What are the challenges of balancing a game?

Keeping it rewarding, while not handing things away.

What should every player of your game believe? Why?

I think they should believe in your rules. Even if the rules have an error, play until you encounter that, and deal with it accordingly. Nobody’s going to have fun if you’re looking for problems.

How can you avoid stealing players fun?

Stay out of the game, as the game maker.

What 10 maxims should you follow when writing rules?

Use no intermediary terminology

Use real words

Make no more work than necessary

Add flavor (but not too much flavor)

Make your text no smarter than your reader

Discard rules that can’t be written

Take a breath

Go easy on the eyes

Get your final version playtested

Fix it in the FAQ

How has play testing changed your game?

I can think whatever I want about something I make, but there can be a lot of things that I could – and did – miss.

Who from class would you like to play test your next game or version 2 of your first game?

Ronan.

Who is the audience for your game?

People who like to have fun.

Who should play test your game outside of class?

My roommates.

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Romito Week 8 Questions

  1. The difference is that a game designer designs the initial concept and game itself, whereas game developers interact with the users and tune the game to meet their needs.
    1. During the game development process the game goes through initial tests, defining of the rules and acquiring an identity (title, theme, etc.).
  2. What is challenging about balancing a game is how difficult or complex you want to make it for the user – if it is too challenging the user might not want to play again – as well as the cost of the game.
    1. the user playing the game should feel fulfilled and accomplished when playing the game, having a feel of hope driving them to want to play till the end.
    2. To avoid stealing players’ fun, things in the game that allow the user to influence others, but not simply deal to the leader allows for fun.
  3. no intermediary words, use real words, no unnecessary work, add some theme, readable text, all rules must be written, keep writing to the point, keep text uniform, play test the rules
  4. Play testing allowed me to understand what worked well in my game and what didn’t. I received really good feedback. I would like for those who haven’t already played to play to get different feedback. The audience for my game is anyone interested in card games, not any particular age.
  5. I could play test my game on my little sister. She is 9 so seeing if even a younger demographic enjoys the game and has a chance at winning it allows for a wider range of people to play.
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Questions 3

1 game designers make the game as game developers make the game better.

1-1 what is done in the development process is an initial test, looking at the rules, blind play testing, and title/theme

2 number of components and there complexity, cost

2-1 the play should feel achieved

2-2 let them play the whole game, no king making, don’t reward the leader, no deceleration, the ability to influence others, don’t force a reverse

3 no intermediary words, use real words, no unnecessary work, add some theme, readable text, all rules must be written, keep writing to the point, keep text uniform, play test the rules

4 testers for my game have been those in class and roommates

4-1 the people that should test my game is a mix of those who have tested a previous version and those who have not played at all. When it comes to any new game prototypes everyone in the class is able to give some kind of useful information after a test.