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Week 3 Discussion and Game Ideas

Game Reflection:

Tokaido: Tokaido had an interesting premise of going on a journey and seeing and doing as much as your can before the end. While the game was not overly competitive, each of us playing still ended up slightly competing against one another as we started to reach the end of the game. Each of us also developed our own strategies on how to gain the most points, I ended up going for as many complete panoramas as I could get, this however did not lead to me having the most points. Overall the game was a relaxing and fun game that we still ended up bringing a competitive attitude towards.

5 Collaborative Game Ideas:

  • Blind Trust is a collaborative game in which The Navigator, who gives simple directions, and The Saboteur, who gives wrong directions, with the goal of either guiding or misguiding the Blind Player to a destination by giving their directions.
  • Card Flip is a memory/strategy game in which the players throw cards down onto the ground and try to determine what the last card in the deck is by analyzing the face up cards and knowing which could be left.
  • Testers is a guessing game in which players must guess an object or edible item by blindly interacting with it and working together to guess the mystery object.
  • Rock, Paper, Defense is a team game in which players must face the enemy team in games of Rock, Paper, Scissors with the goal of protecting their ‘base’ or destroying the enemy ‘base’ by beating each member of the enemy team three times and reaching their ‘base.’
  • Circle of Letters is a memory game in which players gather in a circle around the main guesser and each of them take turns saying letters of the alphabet, the guesser must then guess what letter is not being said by carefully listening and determining the correct letter.
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Pandemic Game Review

I really enjoyed the game Pandemic. I don’t think I’ve played many board games where players are playing against the actual game rather than each other, so the collaborative element of it really stood out to me, and made it much more interesting and fun. 

The game centers around a group of four different spreading diseases, and our goal as players was to cure the diseases. The first time through, we only managed to cure one disease, and also got caught off guard because we hadn’t realized that the game ends as soon as the cards run out. Realizing this, and having a bit of knowledge about the game now, we went into our second play through with a bit more strategy and managed to cure three of the four diseases.

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Collaborative Game Ideas

1. Art Heist is a board game in which players play as a group of art thieves who are attempting to steal a famous painting by making their way around the board without getting taken out by security cards.

2. Trash to Treasure is a physical game where players are attempting to create a “treasure” using various everyday items that they might typically consider trash. 

3. A New World is a card game where players are playing as a group of survivors who are in charge of rebuilding a society using resource cards. 

4. Treasure Hunters is a board game where players work together to find the hidden treasure using each of their individual map pieces. 

5. Traffic Jam is a puzzle game in which players work together to get their game pieces through the traffic jam by taking turns and solving the puzzle. 

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5 Collaborative Card Game Ideas

  1. Match Maker is a collaborative card game in which the players both compete and collaborate in teams of two in order to determine who can match all the cards in the fastest amount of time.
  2. Murder Reader is a collaborative card game in which the players collaborate in order to try to figure out who the murderer amongst the group is by using the deck of playing cards that each have information or murder weapons. (similar to clue or among us)
  3. Silent Hell is a collaborative card game in which players collaborate in silence in teams of 2 or more in order to help their teammates figure out what cards they have in their hand.
  4. Levels Laboratory is a collaborative card game in which players work all together in order to get cards in order from 1-13 either collectively or individually using playing cards.
  5. Info Idol is a collaborative card game in which players work together in teams of 2 to give their teammates information and earn a total of 21 points total using playing cards.
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Cooperation Game Ideas/ Hanabi and 8 Minute Empire Reviews.

1.Quicksilo is a card game in which players cooperate in teams of two to build a nuclear defense system before time runs out.
2. Appointment is a board game in which players cooperate to make it to an important meeting on time.
3. Sprawl is a card based city building game in which players cooperate to create the largest and most prosperous city possible by managing resources and construction.
4. Man on the Inside is a card game where everyone must work together to determine who among them is the Russian spy using deception, investigation, and espionage.
5. Stack is a dice game where players cooperate to build the tallest tower possible without knocking it over by stacking blocks.

Reviews:
Hanabi
Hanabi is a card game about creating a fireworks display. Everyone is on the same team for this endeavor, but players cannot look at their own hands, meaning teamwork is vital. During a player’s turn, he may play a card or give a single piece of information. He may also discard a card to return a token to the board, which must be paid every time information is shared. The game ends when the draw pile is gone, and points are earned based on the number of fireworks of each color that were placed on the board. The game is pretty quick and easy to learn, but the rules lead to some interesting situations. Managing information and holding important cards is a tough tightrope to walk.

8 Minute Empire
This is a more competitive game where players compete to build the biggest empire possible. Actions taken and bonus resources are based on cards that are drawn from a queue, with higher cards costing money. This means there is an element of uneasy cooperation as players draw cards to try and get the cost of the more valuable ones down while also trying not to give anyone else an advantage. The rules are not written particularly well, though, in my own opinion, so the game was not easy to learn, and it took us more than 8 minutes.

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Week 2 Questions

  • What Mechanics would you like to use for a game with a theme that revolves around being the size of a nanometer?

There would have to be different ways to move around, depending on the size of the board. If the board is very large in comparison to the character, then some transportation options should be present to allow for movement. Maybe teleporting, plane ride, car, etc. But those could be allowed through the drawing of cards or a rolling of dice.

  • Who are you making games for?

I’m making games that I would like to play. It is slightly selfish but as someone who hasn’t ever been very interested in card games/board games, I would like something that I consider fun to play

  • Who will be your play testers outside of class?

My play testers will be my friend group and roommates. Together there’s a solid group of about 8 of us that could cycle through and play test, which is particularly important so that I can sit out and take notes.

  • Can you think of a game you were able to play without referring to the rules?

Uno. But Uno always has some variation in the rules depending on who you’re playing with and how they learned how to play. (ex: stacking +2 cards)

  • How do you define what a game is?

A game is a game if it has a set of constraints or rules and a desired outcome to win. There are of course many variations within this definition, however.

  • What features can make your games more intuitive?

Using features that other popular games already have, but adopt them to fit the needs of your game. If people are already comfortable with familiar game systems, it will be easier to learn.

  • What was your gateway game? What do you play to introduce others to gaming?

My gateway game was Minecraft. My interest in video games grew exponentially from there and have even built more than 5 computers specifically for the purposes of gaming. I introduce people to the Little Nightmares series when I try to get people to play games because it has a clear left-to-right progression system, allows for structured but free movement, and it’s control system isn’t difficult to learn.

  • What features do gateway games share?

The rules are easy enough for anyone to follow

  • What are the 10 beautiful mechanics and what should you aim for with your own?
  1. Kingmaker’s noblesse oblige
  2. BattleTech’s heat
  3. Set’s set-making
  4. Magic’s card tapping
  5. Battle Cattle’s cow tipping rule
  6. xXxenophile’s popping
  7. Bohnanza’s hand order rule
  8. Mississippi Queen’s paddlewheels
  9. Times up! Communication breakdown
  10. Dominions constant shuffling

In our own games we should aim to emulate the success of the above listed mechanics, and use parts of these to develop our own new mechanics that work specifically for our games.

  • How does luck and strategy factor in to game play?

Luck introduces a level playing field to either ensure that all players have an equal chance at winning or at the very least, finishing well. It can also make players feel as though they have had a number of small victories in a game even if they didn’t win. While luck is introduced by the game, it is on the player to utilize their luck and decide how they will strategize. It’s a lot of times entirely possible to win without strategizing, but it of course helps

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group game ideas

1 The court is a card game in which the players collaborate to get all faces card in a standard deck.

2 Strategically Transfer Equipment to Alternative Locations (S.T.E.A.L.) is a physical game in which teams compete to find the largest object and move it to a designated area by using rope and there own strength.

3 Dragon collator is a board game in which players compete to find a dragon by using information cards.

4 Search for gold is a card game in which teams compete to collect lost Nazi gold by using old documents cards.

5 Hide now is a physical game in which players collaborate to avoid the sight of one player by using walkie-talkies.

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8 Minute Empire and Hanabi review

Hanabi

  • the payers are firework makers
  • simple basic rules
  • is corporative play
  • needs at lest 3 players
  • win by creating 1 of each firework type

8 Minute Empire

  • build an empire
  • compete against other players
  • rules are complicated
  • does not tell you if you can get more money
  • mini more complex and shorter version of risk
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Site Review 1 e-commerce

The site I have chosen for my first review is Amazon. When you enter the site the top of the page has a tab from witch you can access all category’s of products. There is also the surch bar, your cart, orders/returns, language settings, and a number of category tabs according to the time of year and helpful tools. This is what you expect to see when you use an sites like this. Navigation of the site is made easier and has a better flow when using category tabs like this.

Going down the home page there are categories of products. The first one at this time is for prime video with the football games that are coming up. After that recommend for you and suggested for you are listed. They show product based on the time of year, and past perches this is similar to how Netflix recommends shows. Next comes random categories of products ex. beauty and personal care, frequently repurchased, amazon live. Last is back to items that are based on your history.

The design of the amazon home page is great at what it was meant to do. Witch is getting you to look at products that you may or may not need and convincing you to buy them. This is done by showing you products that are similar to products you have bought in the past. As you go down the page the products change from similar to past products to products that are not remotely the same. Then it changes back to similar products at the bottom of the home page. When designed this way it gets the costumer to look at products that they may not have been interested in before.

Each category of products shown on the home page in it’s own rectangle separating it from the rest. The rectangles have two different orientations this allow the page to be broken up evenly. Whether the rectangles are horizontal or vertical depends on the number of products in the category. They are only horizontal if it is a small number of products. The horizontal rectangles are the only ones that can be scrolled through.

When you place a product in your cart a red number will appear over the cart icon. At the same time a drop down menu will show you the items you have put in your cart on the right side of the screen. I like this feature because I can see what’s in my cart with out having to go to it. Also I can remove items from my cart with out having to enter it.

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Review 1

My eCommerce site of choice was Fanatics.com. I went on the website to buy a hockey jersey. The homepage of the website is very clean, meaning that at the top of the page it has a search bar that you can easily access to search anything you want. I was very fond of the fact that it also has logos of the different sports leagues that you can click on. Further down the website, it has big pictures of different sales that are going on which were very appealing to the eye. Since I was looking for a hockey jersey, I clicked on the NHL logo at the top of the website. Whenever I clicked on the website, a menu popped up of the different teams. I was looking for a San Jose Shark’s jersey, so I went and clicked on the logo that was labeled San Jose Sharks. Seemed easy enough so far to click on logos that were familiar instead of just clicking on text. On the left-hand side of the website, there was a filtering menu that let you choose the type of product you want and the player you may be seeking. I sorted through the jersey’s and chose one to put in the cart. Something that I did not find to be visually pleasing was the lack of images for sorting out product. There is only text, no visual cues for the list of items available. Once you read through and focus on the item that you want and click on it, there are then different images that they use for the product. After you put it in the cart, there is a shopping cart logo up top, and you would click there to find what you clicked on and added. My user experience from this website overall is that it clearly showed where you could find all their products. You could go from a list of leagues to a list of teams and then to finding exactly what you are searching for. The only time I was thinking was on what player I wanted to get. It was very easy to navigate through the website.

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Review 1

My review is about the ThinkGeek.com website which is under Gamestop. I personally appreciate the website and how easy it is to navigate to the products I want. Making the shopping process so much easier for the consumer. Now there are some problems with it, for one, the picture on the site is too big and takes away from the products at the bottom which requires scrolling, to the average consumer, they would have no idea where to go once launching the page. Furthermore, the site coloring is not right as well, I get that this is a different company than Gamestop or in fact is a company under Gamestop, but Gamestop colors are red and black, while the ThinkGeek site is green and black. I believe the colors of red and black are more appealing to gamers and more eye-catching for the average consumer. Those are my only problems with the site, the website as a whole is a 7/10 website as a whole with the layout, navigation, and lastly ease of use. When you add a product to the cart, it is also easy to order the product of your choice.

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Review 1 – Lego

After reading Chapter 1 of “Don’t Make Me Think”, I learned a lot about the strategies eCommerce sites use. I explored these this weekend when I visited Lego.com.

I was looking for the Rapunzel tower build from Tangled. When I was first brought to this page, I was greeted by a Lego City Stuntz set. This took up about the top third of the page, and it had a “shop now” button that would take me directly to all Lego City sets. Underneath of this was a featured set of products labeled “Recommended for You”, but I think they were just the most recent products to be released. However, the first one in the lineup was a Lego Star Wars advent calendar, which is something I could potentially be interested in purchasing.

Scrolling down the page, underneath of the recommended sets were Bestseller, Fun Family Builds, Offers and Promotions, and Featured Sets. All of these were great and eye catching, but I was ready to look for the tower I came here to find.  Above the Lego City Stuntz set, there was a yellow bar with the Lego logo in the top left corner. Over to the right I found the search bar. I pressed it and all I typed in was “tangled”. The very first search result was exactly what I was looking for. I gathered that since it is the only Tangled set, it was followed by other Disney sets, most likely some the website would tink I could potentially be interested in. It made me laugh because the set immediately following it was a Minnie and Mickey camping set, which I got as a gift for my birthday this weekend. It must know me scarily well or something.

I could have pressed on my Tangled set to look at it more closely, but since I knew I wanted it, I simply hovered over the product and was able to select Add to Bag (or Add to Wishlist). I clicked “Add to Bag”, which prompted another screen. Here, I could select “Continue Shopping” or “View my Bag”. Since this was all I came to buy, I selected “View my Bag”. I thought it was very helpful that it gave me that option, so that I could go directly to checkout. If I did not want to select either of those options, I also could have closed out of that pop up with an “X” in the top right corner. But now, I was at checkout. It was time to whip out the credit card and give my money away to Disney Lego for a birthday present from me to me, just what any twenty-one year old would want, right?

I could see the contents of my online shopping cart on the left side, and on the right side I found the checkout options. There was a spot where I could add any promotional codes I may have, but unfortunately, I did not have any, so I clicked on “Checkout Securely”. I do have an account but in the spirit of simplicity, I chose an option to checkout as a guest. I added in my shipping information. I then proceeded to add in my contact information, along with my payment information. It was all very straightforward and I could see all the steps at the same time, which I appreciated.

I was able to checkout securely and purchase my Tangled tower with Rapunzel and Flynn Rider. What else could a girl ask for? It was all very simple and I loved the website, it was so bright and colorful and featured so many things on the home screen but when it was time to find what I wanted, it was very simple and even gave me suggestions of products after the one I was looking for, without taking anything away or seeming too excessive. All in all, I would totally recommend this website to shoppers and will continue visiting in the future.

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Collab Game Ideas

Black Friday Massacre

Black Friday Massacre is a RPG tabletop game in which players collaborate to make it through Black Friday as a retail worker by overcoming WASP moms, Karens, and hordes of capitalist zombies.

Let Them Eat Cake

Let Them Eat Cake is a collaborative card game in which players work as assassins and attempt to behead all of the most iconic historical monarchs without getting caught. Players may also compete with each other for the most assassinations.

Cutthroat Chicken

Cutthroat Chicken is a tabletop game in which players attempt to escape their fate on the chicken farm by arming themselves against the farmers [the game] and making tough sacrifices.

Seedlings

Seedlings is a card game in which players pick a plant they would like to bloom/ripen into and compete to see who can bloom first while also needing to share resources.

Purity

Purity is a board game where players attempt to avoid committing all 7 deadly sins in order to get to heaven by overcoming peer pressure and temptation. The players may also compete to see who commits the least amount of deadly sins (not required).

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Week 3 – Collaborative Game Ideas

Much Ado About Nothing is a turn based strategy game in which characters must work together to get Beatrice and Benedick (lead characters, NPCs) to fall in love by ‘cornering’ one of the leads and spreading rumors. If you spread x number of rumors, the lead is in love. Both leads must be in love before the wedding of Hero and Claudio (after x amount of turns), or the game is over.

Three Legged Tag is a physical game in which the players must work together to collect and tie up everyone who is free by running after the free people whilst tied up three-legged-race style. If a free person is tagged, they get tied onto the leg of one of the taggers, who then continue chasing non-tagged people.

Lavastones is a physical game in which a group of scientists must all cross a stream of lava by maneuvering the limited number of ‘stones’ that are safe to walk on into a path for everyone to cross.

Squirrels! is a resource-collecting game in which a colony of squirrels must collect enough nuts for winter hibernation by helping each other hit certain milestones or goals on the board (hitting a milestone or goal gives you x amount of nuts).

Matchsticks is a card game in which each team of two players must get to a certain point total before any other team by playing off what their partner has already played.

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Week 3 game reviews

This week we focused on collaborative games. My group (Mia, Delaney, and myself) first played Pandemic with Professor Ames’ help to set up. We didn’t read the character cards, but rather just picked the colors we wanted and went with the corresponding character cards. I had the contingency planner, Delaney had the medic, and Mia had whatever the dark green character was. In terms of acts, it took us a bit to get a hang of the rules, even with Ames helping us out. We finally got into the swing of things after 4 or 5 rounds, which leads us to act 2. At this point, we had cured but not eradicated two of the viruses and we were really getting into the swing of things. We were working as a team to try and get the other two cured… when we ran out of draw cards. Which Ames gleefully told us meant the game was over and we’d lost.

None of us realized that lose condition for the game and were, understandably, shocked and upset. Ames asked if we would play Hanabi, but the three of us unanimously decided to play again. This time, we read the character cards and talked it over with each other to decide which roles would be the best. Delaney stayed the medic, Mia was the scientist, and I was the dispatcher. We were able to get into it a little better this time, and thankfully those stupid epidemic cards all came up relatively early. It took a round or two to fall into our new character roles, but then we were off. We had cured but not eradicated three of the viruses when we all simultaneously realized there was only two more draws worth. This started act 3, and though we tried valiantly in our last two remaining moves, we did not win.

In the last fifteen minutes or so of class, we picked up Hanabi. This also took us a bit to figure out because a) the board was circular and b) neither Mia or Delaney had ever played chess before, which Hanabi is based on. I think we got a decent way through the game in ten minutes before just packing it up and leaving class as it ended. I am unsure that I would play that game again, unless it was with people I knew had played chess before.