Ames' syllabi

Play Test #1

• What questions did your players have? Which cards were which? How pesticide worked? Where is the pesticide card? How many cards can be in each garden?
• How quickly did they learn to play? At least 20 minutes. Quite longer than I expected. 
• What kinds of interactions did the players have? Players planted cards in each other’s gardens. Players also helped each other make the best moves on their turn since everyone was learning the game for the first time. 
• What confused players? The first player rule—whoever has the most houseplants goes first. The players thought that this was determined by the cards that you were dealt. They also didn’t understand at first that you couldn’t plant multiple plants in your garden at once and that each plant you planted is a separate action. They were also confused by the fact that pesticide isn’t a physical card; it is just an action that you declare you are doing. Players also did not form a discard pile for the used plants, bugs, and garden objective cards. 
• What made players excited? The players enjoyed the gameplay and the card art. The most exciting part would have been when players played bugs on each other’s gardens. 
• What did your players enjoy doing? They enjoyed the fact that the bugs make the game more difficult and add value to the game. They enjoyed the size of the bug cards and appreciated that the end of the game isn’t totally obvious because players count their points after someone reaches 7 cards. 
• Did any aspect of the game frustrate players? The objective cards were frustrating and confusing to players. The fact that you have to play the objective card after you completed the card wasn’t totally obvious.

Play Test #2

• What questions did your players have? If you just declare that you are using pesticide? Do you draw at the beginning of your turn? Do you lay the objective card down first?
• How quickly did they learn to play? Pretty quickly. 
• What kinds of interactions did the players have? Players helped each other to understand the game at first and then sabotaged each other with bugs. 
• What confused players? They were confused about discarding plant objectives for another being 1 turn. They were also confused about what they would do if they ran out of plant cards because there was no hand limit. 
• What made players excited? They really enjoyed the gameplay and the card art. 
• What did your players enjoy doing? I could tell that they enjoyed eating others’ plants with bugs. 
• Did any aspect of the game frustrate players? The fact that it is pretty luck based on what cards you draw frustrated some of the players. 

• Other comments:
  • This group accumulated a lot of plant cards in their hands, so a hand limit might be necessary. 
  • This group ran into the issue where they planted plants in the garden that they didn’t want to plant and had no way to remove it. 

Potential Changes to Make

• Simplify garden objective cards rules
• Maybe make good bug cards worth more because they are so rare in the deck?
• Reminder cards that show the different actions that you can take on your turn
• Clarify that objective cards are met automatically and you don’t lay them down until the objective is met
• Clarify that you can only plant ONE plant in your garden
• Make pesticide a physical card or object or otherwise clarify it 
• Potentially make it harder to obtain pesticide
• Design a board to have specified places for the cards to make the face-up cards and discard piles make sense
• Design the garden boards so that there are spaces for the bugs
• Clarify how it is determined which plant is eaten by a bug 
• Clarify what bugs do on the cards themselves
• Add the option to remove a plant from your garden as an action (or you have to get rid of all the plants on that plot)
• Make it 5 cards to trigger the last round
• Could add a fence that protects your garden from bugs for a turn
• Add an incentive to be the first person to finish 
• Add a hand limit so that you don’t run out of plant cards. 
• Clarify that only 3 plant cards can be placed on 1 plot
• Clarify rules regarding discarding cards you don’t want
• Potentially add color to the plant cards
• Maybe rename the plant cards to be flower cards? 

Zombie flux is an interesting game to say the least. There are multiple ways to win the game and multiple way to mess up other players. One of the ways is reaching different goal cards. The players can use rule cards in order to change the rules in ways of benefiting or negatively affecting the players. Its a frustrating game for sure, don’t get me wrong. But I love the fact the rules and goals of the game change throughout it.

Fun game but its not fair when Professor Ames plays with us becausse he has an unfair advantage. All jokes aside, its a simple game that involves ruling the die to hopefully land on one of the squares that you have land on. There is definetly strategy involved in this because you can play it safe and just get the area near you or you can stretch your land out to claim more resources and get a bonus for having the longest road. It is a little rough though if you are not able to move because of the fact you will be extremely limited on resources. The trading factor fixes that a bit so you can get resources that are hard for the players to obtain. Overall i think its a fun game to play, I wish the land was bigger so the game can last longer.

Evan’s music game(sorry i forgot the name)

I like the simplicity of it. All it takes is everyone rolling the die to determine the amount of cards they get. With said cards, you use them to create music which is then played at the end of the game. I think its brilliant because I have never seen anything like it. I could see teachers using this for students to learn how to make music.

Connor’s Building game

Similar to Evan’s, its another game that I have not seen before. I like the fact that its a race to win and requires skill in order to do good. I loved how there was different difficulties as well with a variety of different pieces to build with. The instruction were a litle confusing at first when we played but overall I think it is great. I loved the idea of making like a blueprint with the help sheet attached to it.

Was it fun?

Yes, but took a while to start to understand the game and what the different cards do.

What were the player interactions?

The player interactions were the vast majority of the game by implementing new rules such as only being allowed to have so many cards, and how many cards you can draw.

How long did it take to learn?

About 15 minutes to sort of understand the game enough to start.

Would you play it again?

Not specifically zombie fluxx, but I would play other fluxx games in the future.

Analyze the game using the 3 act structure.

In the beginning, there are no rules and the game just starts and goes like normal. In the middle, the game starts to get interesting based on what keepers you have and what rules are going into place. In the end, you start to get more keepers and the game ends when you reach the goal card, which tends to come quickly when a lucky goal comes in place for someone.

What are the collaborative and or competitive aspects of the game?

Collaborative includes placing rules to better the pace of play. But, competitive can be the same by implementing bad rules on the same people to make the game go slower.

What is the game’s metaphor and which of the game’s mechanics standout?

The metaphor is that you are always trying to reach a goal that isn’t reachable at the moment. But eventually, your cards will align and you will reach your goal. Just like real life.

1. Not feeding your animals all the way by the end.
2. I enjoyed when we altered the game and had to take food away from our own animals to pay debts.
3. I wish I was able to see the animals in my deck in order to read the other players and what they plan on playing.
4. More food, and different food values.
5. Being able to view your cards, food values, less than 3 rounds, and the power of certain animals were a little off. (EX: Donkey being too low)
6. Simple yet fun

1. Figuring out whether or not something was AI, but it is the point of the game so it is fun.
2. I enjoyed trying to trick other players into thinking a card was AI that I had to put down.
3. I wish I was able to know which of my cards were AI so I can attempt to trick players, but it would also drastically change the game so it isn’t an easy change.
4. I would add even more cards so you cannot memorize them.
5. More cards, obvious cards and harder cards to tell.
6. Tests your brain

1. The most frustrating moment of the game is when someone finishes before you due to the card being much easier.
2. I enjoyed the scrambling for pieces at the beginning of the round.
3. I wish I was able to make even bigger pieces, upscaling the game to be even more complex would be fun.
4. I would make the game board larger with more aspects.
5. Larger / more complex board, more complex builds, cool building pieces.
6. Quick Easy Fun

It’s a new kind of game to play for me. I like the use of the sun rotating around the board to give players certain unique advantages. On top of the you can strategize to put the tall tree in the center to block sunlight from other characters trees but your own. The only problem I see is that if there’s a new person playing the game, the other players can easily exploit this and win the game easily. I think it would be cool if there was a way to remove other players trees to slow their progress. Interesting game to play but I’m not sure if it’s the type of game I would play.