Week 5 Game Review

Game Review Week 5

Games Played: Settlers of Catan and Bonanza
This past game we played Settlers of Catan and Bonanza.
Settlers of Catan combines several aspects noted in previous games which include, board building, cards, and growing personal resources. The set up of the game is all apart of the fun-the randomization of tiles and dice chips allows each game to be slightly different. This hexagonal board is broken up into territories of different landscapes which therefore produce different resources. The resources are stored and traded in order to build settlements. The overall objective of this game is to reach the most amount of points. You gain points by having settlements, cities, roads, armies, and resources—each having a different value. The whole premises of this game is realistic in that you can have a city without supplies and you can’t expand your territory without roads. In this case, not only is it a building game of the board, but building in terms of a “kingdom/territory” if you will. The main leveling out factor is that you can only obtain the resources in which your settlement/city is on. Therefore in order to gain the other resources you must revert to trading among other players or trading with the bank. The trading aspect of this game probably assisted the most by allowing for more interactivity between players and strategizing so you do not only focus on yourself and your cards but the other players as well. The many different components of this game made it fun and definitely a Gateway game. I knew that Settlers of Catan was a widely popular game, but having never played it myself I didn’t quite understand why. Although there were different parts of the game and it wasn’t as simple as rolling a die and letting the board do the work, it was simple in a way that it was easy to understand and made sense, mostly because it followed standard economical fashion.
Bonanza is a trading card game which involves strictly beans. The entire deck is made up of several different types of beans-some with more cards than others. The amount of cards per bean determines its value. The overall goal is to get as many coins as possible by the end of the game. However, obtaining them and trying to win proves slightly more challenging. The main difference between Bonanza and something as basic as go fish is its speed and method. To break it down, the beans are worth coins (but you must have so many beans in order to get any coins). Therefore you must continuously/directly add on to your bean chain in the hopes of “growing” enough beans to get coins. The game gets switched up because of 2 simple rules. 1: you MUST always play the top card in your hand. and 2: You can only have 3 beans growing at a time. What breaks this down slightly is that the game does allow for trading among players-however ALL new obtained cards must be planted as soon as they are received. Because there is constant movement Bonanza is a fast paced game where anybody has the opportunity to win. While it is more complex than Go Fish, I’d put Bonanza on the lower end of the spectrum in terms of it being a Gateway game. This is because it was easy to learn, luck involved, and a theme. However there wasn’t much as semblance and the duration lasted maybe 30-40 minutes where as typical Gateway games last 1 hour to 1.5 hours.

Review 2

Choose a single page website that has been highlighted on http://onepagelove.com/. Describe and analyze the site’s use of color and texture. Further, as this is a single page site how does user to navigate from one section of content to another? Does the user have to scroll left to right, top to bottom, all over or is navigation provided that takes the user to the content? What design elements make the site easy to scan, read and understand content. Lastly, make an argument for whether this site’s design is well or poorly done.

The page I chose to review from http://onepagelove.com/, was http://wearelair.com. The website LAIR was pretty self explanatory for a single page website. LAIR’s main color is a vibrant blue, so when scrolling through the website, the blue really pops out at you making you stop and read the blue text. Lair uses the blue to highlight their main points. The website seems to rely on their negative space to separate their content. Texture can be anything from distinctive appearance to the feel of the surface in a design or object. On LAIR’s website, the texture is created through their beautiful pictures and text. The website has a very minimalist feel to it and simple to read. When visiting this website, I noticed that the navigation is quite simple, you scroll from top to bottom. They do have some hyperlinks in their texts but it is much easier to scroll. What makes the website easy to scan is the spacing, the website is free of clutter and the main points are highlighted in blue so that if you’re looking for something specific you just read the blue. Everything is legible as well, the texts are well spaced out that there will be no distractions. The only problem I have with the website is the design, the website looks like it was thrown on all together and they look like they are separate content instead of all one. Like the pictures are overpowering the text because it is bigger than the actual text so it is overwhelming.

Rules

Lyrics vs Mankind Rules

 

 

There is no limit as to how many people can play.

We recommend 6-8 players for the ultimate party.

 

BASIC RULES

 

To start the game, each player takes a white board and marker.

 

The oldest player begins as the Lyric God by choosing a card from either the

Hip Hop, Pop, Rock, or Oldies pile and reading the lyric out loud.

 

Everyone else will create the next line of the song by writing it on their white board and placing it face down in front of the Lyric God.

 

Gently shuffle the whiteboards. The Lyric God will then read the Lyric Card following by the whiteboards out loud. For the full effect, the Lyric God should re-read the Lyric Card before presenting each whiteboard answer. The Lyric God will then choose the best answer and whoever submitted it gets one Rocker Point and collects the Lyric Card.

 

After the round, the player to the left of the initial Lyric God becomes the new Lyric God and will play a new Lyric Card.

 

 

 

Red Zone Rules

 

2 Players

 

BASIC RULES

 

To begin, the youngest player will call out a color (black or white) and they will be subject to those squares. Both players will choose five pawns and line them up at their end of the board on their color.

 

Player 1 will roll Dice 1 providing a number one through six, following by Dice 2 providing Left, Right, Up, Down, Stop, or A Star (L, R, U, D, S,    ). If the player rolls and 2 and a R, they will move right 2. If they roll a S, they do not get to move that turn. If they roll a 3 and a    , they can move 3 in the direction of their choice.

 

The goal for each player is to get to the opposite end of the board without passing over their opponents pawn. If the dice requires that you move Up 2 and that requires you to pass over your opponents pawn, that pawn is eliminated.

 

Players must get all 5 pawns to the opposite end of the board without landing in the Red Zone. The Red Zone is obtained by all 4 corners.

The player with the most pawns at the opposite end wins.

Week 5 – Game Design

Collecting-Type Game Ideas

  1. Toxic Collector – Board Game
    Compete against players for the most unique and dangerous critters. The more unique the find the more dangerous it is to keep it. Last one surviving with the most points wins.
  2. Secret Trend – Board Game
    Compete to win entry into Fashion Week. Tell share secrets and gossip to get through the doors and gain your seat by the runway.

Game Reviews

Catan is a trading and strategy based game where players must build settlements, cities, and roads across a map. The first player to get 10 victory points wins. Catan is similar to Monopoly in some ways. Both games have similar mechanics such as trading, dice rolling, and collecting. Like Monopoly, Catan also uses negotiation and strategy skills. Monopoly’s theme provides a backdrop for the economic downfall of the Depression era. With concepts such as mortgage and bankruptcy, players must be money cautious in a winner-takes-all environment. Catan provides a more recent and familiar backdrop with concepts of limited resources, trade imbalances, and connected fortunes. Overall I thought it was a fun competitive game but I did feel like the rules took some time to adjust too. I do not think this is a gateway game due to its complexity.

Splendor is a game in which players are gem merchants trying to gain prestige points. With enough prestige points, wealthy players can receive visits from nobles which provide more prestige points. This game has a Renaissance theme and mechanics such as deck building and card drafting. The game has a prominent beginning middle and end which is shown by the number of prestige points a player has and how far away they are from the winning score of 15 points. The game could easily be a gateway game due to its originality, ease of play, luck, and replay value. I enjoyed this game very much and would play again.

Resource Games Reflection

I really enjoy games with the resource-collecting mechanic.  The act of collecting resources gives players small bursts of happiness which adds to the fun of the game.  Catan provides this every time one of your numbers comes up.  Splendor provides this every turn in the form of gaining new gems or cards.

The second act in our Catan game happened abnormally early, as Robert had an extremely advantageous spawn point.  The third act started when Robert began to upgrade all of his villages to cities.  The second act in Splendor started the moment people started to purchase cards.  The third act began when nobles began to be claimed.

Catan was relatively lacking in theme, which is why I’d guess it was developed with mechanics in mind.  While Splendor has a bit more theme to it, its mechanics could easily be re-mapped to a different theme, which is why I’m guessing it was also developed with mechanics in mind.

5 Building Game Ideas

Desmond Rossignoli

  1. Warped Space – I am not sure how this game is to be played, but I envision players placing new tiles and expanding the board.  Tiles would come in shapes that tesselate (such as triangles, diamonds, and rectangles), and would have grids on them which the player could move along.  The grid squares would be varied in size, and proportioned 1:4:16.  This would allow players to move quickly on some areas of the board, and quite slow in other areas.
  2. Obstacle Source – Players will increase their stats (jumping, running, climbing, dodging, etcetera) while collecting obstacles.  Players may play obstacles in front of each other, ideally building up an obstacle course in front of each player.  At the end of the game, the players run their courses simultaneously, and the first to the end is the winner.
  3. Demonlords – A new layer of hell is being developed, and God has appointed some new Demon Lords to take charge.  As the new layer of hell begins to expand, players will take over swathes of land, build up various torture rooms within their territory, and populate their rooms with sinners as they begin to flow in.
  4. I Want to be the Dungeon Master – Ever play a round of Dungeons & Dragons where everyone wants to be the Dungeon Master?  I know your pain, which is why in this game, each player plays as a dungeon master, competing for various tiles to add to their dungeon, placing treasure and monsters as they go.  In phase 2, each player randomly gets assigned a dungeon other than their own, which they must survive and loot.
  5. Sanitation Frustration – A cooperative game where pollution gets placed on an ever-growing map, and players must work together to fix the environment.

ChessRPG Rules

ChessRPG – Desmond Rossignoli

Materials Included:
Standard 8×8 chess board
2 sets of 16 chess pieces with draw-erase bases
12 Ability cards (2 sets of 6)
Draw-erase marker w/ eraser

Set-up
The game is set up like a standard chess game.
Row 1 (Player 1): Rook, Knight, Bishop, Queen, King, Bishop, Knight, Rook
Row 2 (Player 1): Pawn, Pawn, Pawn, Pawn, Pawn, Pawn, Pawn, Pawn
Row 7 (Player 2): Pawn, Pawn, Pawn, Pawn, Pawn, Pawn, Pawn, Pawn
Row 8 (Player 2): Rook, Knight, Bishop, Queen, King, Bishop, Knight, Rook
Set all of the pieces to maximum health by filling in the numerator on the bottom of each chess piece (for example, the bottom of the queen should show 2/2).
The younger player goes first.

New Rules for Attacking:
– When attacking a piece, check your attack value and subtract that from the opponent’s piece.
– If you do not completely kill a piece, you do not move your piece to replace it.
– If you successfully kill a piece, you MUST move your piece to replace it.

New Abilities:
King: Enemy pieces adjacent to your king cannot move or attack.
Queen: When your queen has line-of-sight to the enemy king, the enemy king’s ability is canceled.
Bishop: As your action, you may swap a bishop for one of your dead pieces.  The piece is brought back onto the board at full health.
Knight: When one of your pieces is adjacent to one of your knights, that piece may move and attack as a knight would.
Rook: Any of your pieces next to one of your rooks cannot be attacked.
Pawn: If a piece of yours is attacked and a pawn of yours is adjacent to it, the pawn may take the damage instead.

Stats:
King: 5 attack, 1 health
Queen: 4 attack, 2 health
Bishop: 3 attack, 3 health
Knight: 2 attack, 4 health
Rook: 1 attack, 5 health
Pawn: 1 attack, 1 health

*Stats and abilities are displayed on ability cards

End of Game:
The game ends – as any chess game does – when a king is removed from the board.

Week 4 Board Game Reflection

Desmond Rossignoli

Of the two games brought in today, my group only had the opportunity to play Nano-bots (because of interviews).  Fortunately, RMU’s Tabletop Club will be purchasing Carcassone and its expansions soon, which will give me the opportunity to experience it in the future.

Nano-bots was frustrating to play but in a good way.  Not only were moves extremely strategic, but they also provoked loud debates between players, advising alternate moves (which might be more advantageous).  I enjoyed this atmosphere a lot, as it introduced a cooperative element into an otherwise competitive game.

The third act came very late in the game, as it took a while for any of the players to get a firm lead.  If I had to guess, I would say that the mechanics of this game were developed (mostly) before a theme was concocted.

Death Sentence Rules

Death Sentence – Desmond Rossignoli

Materials Included:
6 Play Mats
120 Noun Cards + 5 Blank Nouns
120 Verb Cards + 5 Blank Verbs
48 Adverb Cards + 2 Blank Adverbs
48 Adjective Cards + 2 Blank Adjectives
48 Location Cards + 2 Blank Locations

Set-up:
1. Shuffle all of the cards into one deck
2. Each player starts with a play mat in front of them
3. Deal 5 cards to each player
4. The player who read a novel for leisure most recently begins, and play proceeds clockwise.

On Your Turn:
1. Draw 1 card
2. Place 1 card from your hand to the corresponding space on your mat
3. Trade 1 of your cards with a random card from one of your opponents

End of Game:
After the 10th round, the game is over, and points are tallied.
1. Earn 1 point for each card present in a complete sentence
2. Each player chooses their favorite sentence which they did not write, and awards 1 pt to that player (this step is skipped in a 2-player game)
3. The players vote together for their favorite sentence, and award it 2 points
4. In the event of a tie, the person with the most verbs/nouns in their hand is the winner.  If there is still a tie, the player who was last in the turn order (between the tied opponents) is the winner.

Prototype Play Mat Format:
[Verb] and [Verb][Adj] by [Noun]
[Adv][Verb] in [Location]
[Adv][Verb] by [Noun]
Killed by [Noun] in [Location]
Death by [Adj][Noun]
[Verb] by [Noun]

Week 4 Reflection & 5 Building Ideas

Review:

In week 4, we first played Nanobots. I got a very thorough understanding of this game and I really enjoyed it. It was fairly easy to learn and understand. Each turn was justified by the action card and the players strategy. I feel like this was a game of chance but also a game of strategy. Even if the player had a great strategy, the action cards picked by their opponents could easily kill them. As for the other game, we didn’t have time to thoroughly play the game, but from what we did get to do, it was very confusing. I was not a big fan of this game. There was a very long list of rules that didn’t really make sense.

5 Building Games:

  1. Train
    In this game, you will build a train to travel across the world. The cards you pick will gain you money, parts, or passengers. The bigger your train gets, the more protection and supplies you will need.
    If you do not have the required parts for the amount of passengers, your passengers will die. You have to save as many people as possible.
  2. Blocks
    There will be blocks of different sizes and colors. You will pick up a card telling you what block to pick up. You must strategically build your tower as high as possible without it falling. Once a block is placed it cannot be moved. Whoever has the highest tower wins.
  3. Duck Crossing
    Each player will have 4 ducks. Each duck has a character card that tells you their needs. You must gain money and supplies to build a river for the ducks to swim in. If you do not fulfill the needs of a duck, they die. Whoever saves the most ducks wins.
  4. Office Building
    Players will pick a card with a company on it and their requirements. Players will pick cards giving them supplies and/or money. Using these, they will have to build an office building for their company. You must fulfill all of the needs of your company to win.
  5. Color Match
    Each player will pick two colors (RGBY). They will have 30 tokens per each color. Players lay one token per turn. The goal is to get three of the same color in a row before the other player disrupts it. Once all of the tokens run out, the player with the most matches wins.

 

Week 5- Haley Bado

Review:

  • NanoBots was fun, however it ruined our friendships as we kept attacking each other. I liked the idea, but a board with a grid would have made it easier to tell who was adjacent to one another. Cascassonne we did not really understand very much. I liked building the board, the “kingdom,” and connecting the pieces, but we did not really figure out the point of the characters.

Building Game Ideas

  • Balloon Pop
  • Getting Promoted
  • Build a skyscraper
  • Make a meal?

Haley Bado- Reviews Week 1-4

Week 1:

  • Flux started out slow as we first started playing, but once we figured out the rules the game got more interesting and fun. Love letters was the same way, but we caught on more quickly because there were less cards and it was the same concept as the last game with the changing rules. Hanabi was difficult because we couldn’t look at our cards. It was confusing until we figured out how to play, but I did not enjoy it as much as the first 2 games.

Week 2:

  • I liked playing the character building games, or games with characters.  It was a was a depressing topic when having to kill all your characters, but it was still a fun game and a different concept than anything we’ve played before. I liked playing the medieval game when you had to buy each card and choose when to play it.  Once we got the hang of it, it was really fun and easier to play.

 

Week 3:

  • Takenoko and Pandemic were my favorite to play. The Italian game was hard to understand, even with the English directions. We also kind of made up our own rules because it was hard to understand what exactly we were supposed to do.  Takenoko was a lot of fun, and I also liked playing in teams. Once we all go the hang of them game, it was really fun and cute. Pandemic was my favorite. We needed to sure the world and the directions were easier to understand. We did not get to finish the game, but I wish we did.

 

Haley Bado- Game Ideas Weeks 1-4

Card Ideas:

  • Dominos
    • Have to play the card in hand
  • Special Card
    • Get the card and keep it until all cards are gone
    • Rules
  • Changing Rules
    • Bunch of cards with rules
    • Out if rules not followed
    • Last man standing wins

Chess Ideas:

  • Tetris
    • Stack pieces
    • Dice tells which pieces to play
    • Tower cannot fall
  • Play with all colored pieces
    • Memory Game
  • Hop Scotch
    • Dice tells how many jumps
    • Cant land on different colored space
    • Last player standing
    • checker piece out if land on an X space

Themes:

  • Spy Game
    • One person is a double-agent
    • Guess who it is
  • Building
    • has to build their “tower” first
  • Witchy
    • Collect ingredients for a spell
    • Be the first to cast a spell
    • Obstacles and Magic Cards
  • Fly a plane through a storm
  • Salem Witch Trials
    • Don’t get burned at the stake
  • Crystal Garden
    • Good vs Bad person/witch
    • Get the crystal before the other
    • Maze
  • Zodiac
  • 13 Ghosts
    • Save their souls

 

 

5 building ideas

1.Build you boat
-Objective: to shuttle as many people you can across the moat, passed the alligators and ogres living in
 the swamp.
-Concept: You acquire money/ and or supplies to build extensions on to your boat. The bigger the boat, the more people that you can safely get into the castle before the war breaks out. You can cross the moat as little or as many times as you’d like, but it is full of uncertainty and does not guarantee safe passage.
-Twister, the longer your boat gets, the bigger the moat gets/gets filled with unwanted creatures.
-Choose wisely-you cannot save everyone.
  1. Treasure hunt
-you have a starting point and an end point. You build the your pathways towards the finish spot (lets say treasure “x marks the spot” for example). You and your opponents are both trying to get to the treasure before the others so it is a matter of if you build upon your own path, or target your opponents. If your path intersects with another player’s on your turn you can choose to set them off course. These actions will include fight outbreaks, hurricanes/storms, raiding supplies, etc. Or the actions can take the form of rules such as only left turns, or other interactions within the game.
  1. Up a hill both ways
-You are an elderly man, reminiscing about your younger years. Where you worked your way through college and never took on any debt, never used a cell phone and knew what responsibility was all about . You are sitting with your grandchildren who are complaining about not being privileged enough and you are outraged. You begin telling them how hard your life was, specifically your walk to school, which took you 3 hours through a farm, in the snow, with holes in your shoes and…up a hill both ways. What if your trek to school really was this difficult?
In, “up a hill both ways” you are in charge of your journey and your destiny. You can build the board and your path with different tiles, horizontally along the board or even vertically. The harder the journey, the better the story-but remember you aren’t as nimble as your 10 year old self, so be weary and make it home on time for dinner.
  1. Wild Goose Chase
-Based off of/inspired by Bamboo. You have a goose figurine who continuously is on the move…by whoever’s turn it is not. Therefore this is a game of luck. The board will continuously grow and the goose will gain more and more land to run off too. You can prevent and direct his path by building fences or cutting down the trees so that you can see him better. You can also opt to ask the goose moover for a hint on which direction you can take—the catch is that they are allowed to lie to you a certain amount of times.
-Objective: to find the wild goose and land on the same space to “capture it”
  1. Egyptian themed
-Objective: building of the pyramids
-You have so many laborers and materials to show that your nation is superior.
-The building of a pyramid is a process, you must mine and get your materials and acquire each block of stone. This is a very process oriented game and you must build your pyramid before your opponent to show superiority.