What made the experience fun or not? The game is fun because it forces intense communication under pressure. It can become frustrating if communication breaks down or if players don’t listen carefully.
What is the motivating factor to get or keep players playing? The challenge of increasingly complex bomb modules. The communication can become very difficult if the other player isn’t good at directions.
Is the game persuasive, and what is it trying to get you to do outside of the game? Yes, it persuades players to value clear communication, patience, and collaboration. In the real world it can help players inhabit listening skills, strategy, and staying calm under stress.
What is the game’s metaphor and which of the game’s mechanics standout? High stakes problem solving depends on communication, not individual intelligence. Bouncing back and fourth between the players and how easily one explains what they see and how well the other follows direction.
How does the gameplay make you feel? Who does the game make you feel empathy for? It makes me stressed , but also watching other people play is kind of humorous as you sort of watch them struggle in the game. It makes you feel empathy for the one trying to describe the situation since they can’t directly see what’s going on.
Is the game an activist game? If so what does the game play advocate for? I don’t think its necessarily and activist game, but I think it can sort of advocate foe collaboration under stress, and how to learn ti work in those situations.
Describe the game in 3 sentences or in the form of a haiku. Ticking wires and fear Voices clash, pages turning , Trust defuses time.
What questions did your players have? The players had questions regarding how to determine the winner.
How quickly did they learn to play? I would say it took the players about 10 minutes to learn, even though the directions were quite confusing.
What kinds of interactions did the players have? The players interacted with the judge each round when deciding who had the best advice card and reality check card.
What confused players? The confusion stemmed from the game’s objective, as the notes indicate the need to “Fix the rules” and clarify that the objective is to be the best therapist to gain points, while “winning bad therapist is losing points.”
What made players excited? What made players most excited was getting to sift through each different type of prompt that they could choose from.
What did your players enjoy doing? The players enjoyed selecting funny advice cards.
Did any aspect of the game frustrate players? The biggest frustrating aspect was understanding the rules, which I was working on defining. The point of confusion about the rules and winning conditions.
What did your players learn /take away from your game? Was that what you intended? Players learned good coping skills and elements to make it through life.
What is your plan to address player questions, confusion, and frustration? The plan includes to “Fix the rules,” clarify the objective as being the best therapist to gain points, and to clarify that winning “bad therapist” is losing points. The game will be structured to have one round of bad advice and one round of good advice, using sets of good and bad advice cards. Mechanical changes include having players “play two cards every turn,” setting the “hand limit go down to three cards,” and possibly replenishing cards when a player is down to one. The round itself will change to first picking the best advice and then redoing the round with a “reality check” card to leave room for open discussion.
If your players didn’t get your intended message, what will you change? The change plan involves new scoring and mechanical considerations: the objective is to be the best therapist to gain points, with the advice card winning three points, the reality check card winning five points, and all points being added up at the end of the game to see who wins. Other changes include keeping the “prompt card” if a player wins the reality check round, and keeping the “bad advice card in a separate pile to keep track of.” For inspiration, the designer plans to look at the game Gloom and look up the game Wavelength.
The experience was made fun by being in last place.
What is the motivating factor to get or keep players playing?
The motivating factor to get or keep players playing is the ability to destroy planets.
Is the game persuasive, and what is it trying to get you to do outside of the game?
Yes, the game is persuasive because it is trying to get you to take a look at the way we treat our earth outside of the game.
What is the game’s metaphor and which of the game’s mechanics standout?
The game’s metaphor is to treat our environment with respect, and specifically to preserve the planet.
The standout mechanic is the idea of being able to destroy planets.
How does the gameplay make you feel? Who does the game make you feel empathy for?
The gameplay makes the player feel excited to jump into the game, and it makes the player feel empathy for our planet.
Is the game an activist game? If so , what does the game play advocate for?
Yes, the game is an activist game, and the gameplay advocates for reflection.
Describe the game in 3 words.
The game is described as “Creative black holes.”
Cards and meaples were confusing. I like the mechanics. The planet cards were interesting to use in order to gain things in elements. Black holes were nice to touch to create an incentive to destroy planets to gain resources.
Andrews Game:
What was the most frustrating moment or aspect of what you just played?
The most frustrating moment was when the player was trying to move forward but could only move back, which required them to move back off the board or else they could not move anymore.
Was there anything you wanted to do that you couldn’t?
The player wanted to be able to move forward more.
If you had a magic wand to wave and you could change, add, or remove anything from the experience, what would it be, what should improve the next version?
The player would add another die to see if there was anything more they could do with the turn to keep the game moving, but noted that you have to land on white.
The player also had a question about what happens when you go too far left and whether their perspective or direction would change.
What was the game’s narrative/themes/message?
To be honest, the player did not really gather a theme or a message at all.
How did the game make you feel?
The game honestly made the player feel bored and dragged on.
Describe the game in three words.
The game is described in three words as “potential to grow.”
– It was frustrating how many cards I had to pick up. – My favorite moment was winning and the counting aspect of the game. – There wasn’t anything I wanted to do that I couldn’t. – If I could change anything, I would add counting backwards. – I think the game’s narrative and theme was counting. – I would describe it as unreasonable, interesting, and fun. – A question I had: Do we have to start with 1? or a card from the pile? – The reason I said unreasonable for describing it is because we just picked up cards until we got a higher number, which was a lot. Maybe if it was just picking up one card and moving on would be better.
MODIFIED JENGA
– The most frustrating moment was the blocks falling really fast, obviously lol. Maybe more blocks would be better, or playing around with the form of the tower? – My favorite thing about this is that it’s really interesting and the tasks were pretty funny. – If I were to add anything, I would probably add more cards/tasks/possibilities. – I think it would also be better to clarify in the rules that there are notes on the blocks themselves that align with the cards. It was confusing at first. – The games narrative/theme was to pick the blocks up and don’t make the tower fall. – I would describe the game as interesting, fun, and creative. – It’s a really engaging and interesting game, again, just more tasks/rules I think would keep it engaging for a longer time.
BATTLE OF THE SUITS
– For this game, Professor Ames told us to play it in a group of 5 instead of 1v1 how it was intended. From this, we tackled how to go about that. – It was frustrating not knowing who to attack and not attacking the person who is attacking you. – I really liked the clear cards and the hp aspect. The attacking was really fun as well. – If it were to expand to a 5 player game, I would add the ability to choose who you attack. – Even for 1v1, I think it would be good to add something that tracks the hp as the game goes on. – The game’s theme was to basically stay alive and keep your hp. – I would describe the game as interesting, entertaining, and competitive. – A question I had: Do we pick up a card after each turn? Should we have 5 cards the whole game? – I would make more clear rules on who to target, attack, and shields. – I would also add more cards.
ONE: EVIL UNO
– It was frustrating not knowing what each card means. You would have to play it a lot to get more familiar with each card; a lot of card varieties. – I loved how funny and different it was. It wasn’t just an uno knockoff. – I would change the F-U card and make it into something that you can use against others. – I would also make fewer +4 or +something cards. Players ended up gaining way too many cards, up to half the stack which gets annoying because it never ends. – Maybe a way to get back in the game would be interesting? – I would describe the game as different, evil and funny. – Definintely fits evil uno!!
maybe put base attack dmg on the character card itself
When a player runs out of attacks & only has food left, what do you do?
Powerup shield defense- is this card placed before or after an attack?
Powerup thorn melee does not say how much damage is done to attacker or other player since it hits both
Do you draw a card every round regardless if you played a card or not?
Are you required to play the card that you draw?
Add rule of splitting number of food cards depending on how many players there are
Add a few more attacks that are not melees
Add a lot more general attacks since there is more food than attacks
When spoiled milk card is played, make it so that the food that gets discarded is split between being discarded & taken by the person who played the card
Because there’s too much food, it makes it hard to win and kill each other
Stella is a bit overpowered because most attacks in deck currently are mostly melees & stella is immune
Can you attack w/o a powerup as just your character?
If so, how many times can you use it?
Also, if so, can you combine your character’s attack with the powerup?
Battle of the Suits – The most frustrating moment was that it did not end. I feel like this is supposed to be a fast-paced game. – My favorite aspect was using the Ace as a high point card. However the instructions did not specify if Ace was played as 1 or 13. -I would adda a way to track HP and shield points. – The clarity/wording of the rules could be improved. – In 3 words: more complex war
Pirates – Takes a while to learn, which is frustrating, but it gets easier after that. – My favorite aspect is the roleplay/imaginative part. Overall, great immersiveness. – I would change the character sheets so that the information is easier to absorb; the multiple pages felt overwhelming. – Moves/actions could be explained better. – I loved the pirate adventure narrative. – In 3 words: D&D Pirate Parody
it was hard to decide which colors were purple and which were blue so I would just alter the shades of those colors or change one of the colors altogether.
