Ames' syllabi

• My 5 Game ideas:
• 1. Sample Scrabble: Everyone must use the given samples (at random) to create their own songs from scratch
• 2. Edit if you said it: A game which consists of each player coming up with a 30 second long story to tell about anything they want. The next goal is to give every other player try and recreate the story through editing images in a video like format.over top of the audio clip of the story that was told. At the end there is a vote for who made the best edit, and then they are gifted with the ability to tell the next story.
• 3. Draw or die: A player must draw how they got out of a random dangerous situation which is given to them through a set of cards. everyone else then must guess what sparked this drawing, whether he/she got his/her limbs chopped off, or he/she got into a pool full of sharks, etc. but they get to guess before the player is done drawing. Every 15 seconds players get a guess. The first player gets a full minute to draw the image before they win or not. The goal is to guess right. Both the drawer and the guesser win a point if this is done correctly.
• 4. Sculptor’s Sherrades: Each player is given a chunck of clay, and a card out of the deck. Each player must take 2 minutes or less to sculpt what their card is, such as a dog or a sword, or a set of headphones, etc. Whoever guesses or makes the right thing first wins a point.
  • 5: Build it: A game that consists of giving every player a random set of legos, all shoken up beforehand and poured evenly into a cup. Each player then must build something based on the universal prompt given each round. After the 5 minute timer goes off, there will be a third party judge who decides who earns the point. Whoever has the best depiction or metaphor for what the prompt was gets a point, and is then the next round’s judge.
    1. What Mechanics would you like to use for a game with a theme that revolves around being the size of a nanometer?
  • For this game, I would love to possibly do a twist on a realm similar to the universe created in the animated film, Fantastic Planet, where the humans are the size of insects, and the aliens, or Drakes, are huge. This could possibly be a game that would consist of a player viewing a open world realm, only through the viewpoint of a tiny dude. Or I could do a physical game similar to the concept of Magic School bus, where you learn about different parts of the body on the cards you read as one ventures through the human anatomy shaped board with lil school bus pieces.
    1. Who are you making games for?
  • The first game idea would definitely be for people who geek out about obscure films like fantastic planet, whereas the other one would be a fun game for kids.
    1. Who will be your play testers outside of class?
    2. My friends and family
  • Question Set 2
    1. Can you think of a game you were able to play without referring to the rules?
  • Jenga is an easy one for this question. This game is just fun to play, especially when its huge. But it’s never complicating and doesn’t need a whole lot of instructions.
    1. How do you define what a game is?
  • You define what a game is by being able to have some sense of playability, as well as mechanics.
    1. What features can make your games more intuitive?
  • Possibly I could find ways to make the process go by faster, as with all my games, time is a big factor, and could be seen as a constraint if one doesn’t have enough of it and wishes to play one of my games.
  • Question Set 3
    1. What was your gateway game? What do you play to introduce others to gaming?
  • To be honest, my Gateway Game was probably Ice Age the meltdown, where you mainly played as Scrat, and you explored the world of Ice Age and solved puzzles in an open world like realm.
    1. What features do gateway games share?
  • Nostalgia for sure.
    1. What are the 10 beautiful mechanics and what should you aim for with your own?
  • Dexterity mechanics: I will keep in mind that the objects must be pleasing to touch, that the game pieces arent rigid or rusted.
  • Core Mechanics: I will make sure all my games involve a rulebook to come with each game.
  • Movement controls: I will be involving a lot of hands on and creative work from each player into my games
  • Combat systems:  I will have a point system to cause more eagerness to win
  • Resource management: I will fund or find funds for all my games
  • Puzzle-solving mechanics: I will give every game an aspect of an issue that must be fixed.
  • Player objectives and rewards: I will want every player to wish to win
  • Character interactions: I want all the players to enjoy their time with each other, and regardless of how anything turns out, still be respectful and admirative of other’s work.
  • Level design: I will make sure the set up of the physical atributes of the game looks sleek.
    1. How does luck and strategy factor in to game play?
  • It all depends on the cards you’re dealt, as well as how one chooses to use his cards.

Question Set 1

1. What Mechanics would you like to use for a game with a theme that revolves around being the size of a nanometer? One could play around with a mechanic like scaling, where players can either shrink or grow to interact with varying environments. 
2. Who are you making games for?
   • I am making games for audiences to enjoy and provide feedback on. 
3. Who will be your playtesters outside of class?
   • My friends and brother will aid me in playtesting. 

Question Set 2

1. Can you think of a game you were able to play without referring to the rules?
   • Rock paper scissors, uno, scategories.
2. How do you define what a game is?
   • Mechanics, rules, interaction, challenges, theme, and story.
3. What features can make your games more intuitive?
   • Having clear objectives, consistent rules, and intuitive design are all features that would aid. 

Question Set 3

1. What was your gateway game? What do you play to introduce others to gaming?
   • My gateway game was Ticket to Ride. To introduce others to gaming, I often have a group play Catan. 

1. What features do gateway games share?
   • Gateway games are easy to play and also learn. They often have straightforward rules and engaging gameplay that can potentially hook players and lead them to explore other games.
   •  
2. What are the 10 beautiful mechanics and what should you aim for with your own?
   • Kingmakers noblesse oblige, battletech’s heat, set’s set-making, magic’s card tapping, battle cattle’s cow tipping rule, xxxenophile’s popping, bohnanza’s hand order rule, mississipppi queen’s paddle wheels, communication breakdown, constant shuffling. 
3. How does luck and strategy factor in to game play?
   • Luck adds an element of unpredictability, and can level the playing field. Strategy involves planning, decision-making, and rewards skill. 

Game Ideas thats can be played using cards

1. A card game about bees collecting pollen to create honey. Maybe each player has their hive and is competing to build a super hive the fastest? More pollen= more cells=more space. Different plants you go to can be worth different amounts of pollen.
2. Story Builder. Players take turns drawing different cards that have different prompts or themes on them. Each player adds to a collaborative story based on the card they draw, creating a wacky narrative.
3. Players draw cards that give them clues or obstacles in a quest to find hidden treasure. each turn, they can follow a clue or get information. the first person to find the treasure wins.
4. Animal Kingdom? Each card could represent a different animal with unique abilities. Players use their cards to build a thriving ecosystem, balancing predators and prey. Perhaps you could be able to have your animals attack your opponents at the risk of losing their own. The player with the most balanced ecosystem at the end wins.
5. Kid-friendly war! instead of competing for higher numbers, one could make it kid-friendly by making the cards picnic-themed, in which ants beat out picnic foods. cards could be playfully illustrated.

Bohnanza Review

1. Was it fun? Absolutely! The game was enjoyable heavily thanks to its trading mechanism. 
2. Is it interactive? This game was very interactive as players were able to draw, place, and trade cards. 
3. Was it easy to learn? This game was fairly easy to learn. a good read through of the rules and a few rounds in the group got the hang of it. 
4. Would you replay the game? Yes! I plan on purchasing this game to add to my collection. 
5. Applying the three-act structure-

• * Act 1: Read the game’s rules and set up the mechanics (deal 5 bean cards to each person, place the field cards on the correct side). Playing a practice round to get acclimated to the game’s premise.
• * Act 2: The competition begins. Trading the bean cards is where all of the competition takes place. People in need of specific bean cards provide something that the active player requires in order to advance in the game and win.

* Act 3: At the end of the bean game, everyone looks at how many coins each player has and attempts to disrupt the other players by refusing to trade with them. If you decide not to trade, they may not receive enough coins to beat you in the game. Everyone harvests their beans to earn the most coins at the conclusion of the round.

Question Set One:

• If I made a game where the theme was around size, some mechanics I’d implement would be challenges through areas that normal-sized people could not go, such as adventuring through a mouse hole, or attempting to pass through a garden that feels like a jungle very ‘Honey I shrunk the kids’ – I know, but I think making it more of a journey like the “secret life of Arrietty would be fun”. Though these are usual and expected mechanics, more unexpected would be the implementation of being practically invisible and harmed by the elements easier.

• I am making games for my friends and family. I enjoy the competition between people I know, but I also enjoy playing and picking on them without them thinking I mean harm. It’s so fun to tease and taunt!

• Friends and Family.

Question Set Two:

• I feel like games that are often made in a series like Animal Crossing are ones I have never really referred to the rules for, I have played all the games since the first one was made, and the mechanics have only improved, but are always common sense, so I would often skip the tutorials and figure it out. In physical games, I would say as a child it was the game memory, cause, duh.

• How I define a game is by its ability to captivate a player or audience for some time, to convey a message or a task to the player(s).

• I think the feature that would make my games more intuitive would be to make my games look more attractive and pleasing to look at. I have not had a lot of time to create art for my games, hopefully, I will be able to.

Question Set Three:

• My gateway game was Animal Crossing on the GameCube (2001). I grew up always watching my older sister play video games, and one day I grew tired of being player 2, so Animal Crossing allowed me to be player 1 with no questions asked.

• Gateway games are games that are easy to get into without any hassle of needing extra time and preparation to become skilled at the game. They are games that can be played and learned quickly and can be enjoyed regardless of the pace the player chooses to play in.

Amber Holt

Question Set 1:

1. What Mechanics would you like to use for a game with a theme that revolves around being the size of a nanometer? I think a searching type of game, like Spot It would be interesting. Players would have to use super microscopes to search around for the little objects. Even better—it would be cool to have similar mechanics to Hasbro’s Pictureka, where you roll a die or draw a card to see what your finding things challenge is. For instance, some of the challenges are to be the first player to find a certain object or you have to bet against other players about how many of one particular object you can find in a given amount of time. Of course, this would be even more challenging working with microscopes. 
2. Who are you making games for? Myself and other people who want to enjoy them. People who like to play the same types of games that I like to play. To me, as long as I am happy with the game I guess it doesn’t really matter to me who I am making the games for. However, I would love to make games for people who enjoy casual games that they can really get immersed in. 
3. Who will be your play testers outside of class? My mom and my brother, my boyfriend, some media arts friends, my high school friends, and if I can convince them to play, my boyfriend’s roommates and friends. Overall, I want to try to get a variety of people to test out my game. 

Question Set 2:

1. Can you think of a game you were able to play without referring to the rules? Most games I tend to thoroughly read the rules beforehand and refer to the rules probably more often than I really need to. Some games are definitely easier to pick up on than others, especially when the game board is intuitive and has mechanics familiar to other games. My family owns this school trivia game where you move along a game board answering random trivia questions from a pile of cards and if you get the question right, you move the number of spaces as the difficulty level you answer. Because this game is fairly simplistic and similar to the mechanics of a lot of other board games where you roll a die, complete an action of a card and advance, the first time I played it I didn’t really need to refer to the rules at all. The gameboard has a clearly defined start and end so that makes it even more intuitive.  
2. How do you define what a game is? A game has to have rules, it doesn’t need physical objects but can definitely have them, and players have to make choices (whether simple or more complicated). The book says that “A game is an interactive mathematical system, made concrete, used to tell a story” (p. 43). This really just means that a game is a balance of mechanics and rules, pieces and graphics, and a theme. I agree with this definition of a game as well because every sort of game can fit into this, but they may all have different balances. Some games rely more heavily on themes than others and some are almost purely based on mechanics. 
3. What features can make your games more intuitive? Because humans are built to see things in groups, color can make games more intuitive. Cards with the same color or design are seen as belonging together. Certain colors can also signify certain things, like red is bad and green is good. The book also suggests that form can make games more intuitive so you should be clear how something works by the way it is designed. For instance, in The Game of Life if you land on a space with 1 blue baby you get 1 baby boy or if you land on one with 2 pink babies you get 2 baby girls. Deliberately making choices about size and integration is also recommended by the book. The game board also can include reminders about what you are supposed to do when you reach a certain space, for instance, and you can include reference cards for playing, like in Bang. Overall, everything has to make sense from any angle that the players might look at it from and you have to think about what generalizations people make about certain things before they even begin to look at the rules. 

Question Set 3:

1. What was your gateway game? What do you play to introduce others to gaming? The Settlers of Catan was probably my gateway game. It was definitely one of the first games that I played that differed in mechanics than those standard games that everyone has played, but it was still reasonably challenging and easy to learn. I feel like a lot of the games that I enjoy playing are fairly simplistic and largely popular both in terms of board games and video games, so it’s kind of difficult to think of a gateway game that I would play to introduce others to gaming. Like it was for me, I think Settlers of Catan could be a good one for a lot of people because it’s easy to understand but it’s definitely different than those Sorry!-Scrabble-Monopoly-Uno category games that the book mentions. Thinking of more of a party game that I think could be a gateway game for others is Your Worst Nightmare, where players have to rank 4 randomly drawn fear cards based on how scared they are of it and then guess how other players ranked those fears as well. I’ve introduced this game to quite a few people and I think it’s a good get-to-know-each-other type of game. 
2. What features do gateway games share? Gateway games should be easy to learn, have a theme that can appeal to a massive audience, shouldn’t be too complex but still have a little more complexity, interactive with other players, have a luck factor, last between 45 to 90 minutes, be original, and should be replayable. 
3. What are the 10 beautiful mechanics and what should you aim for with your own? The 10 beautiful mechanics are mechanics that are so good that really draw players into the game, and they are the standard for which you should aim to be above. They include Kingmaker’s noblesse oblige, BattleTech’s heat, Set’s set-making, Magic’s card tapping, Battle Cattle’s cow tipping rule, xXxenophile’s popping, Bohnanza’s hand order rule, Mississippi Queen’s paddlewheels, Time’s Up!’s communication breakdown, and Dominion’s constant shuffling. 
4. How does luck and strategy factor into game play? Luck is something that is beyond your control and it can be good or bad. Strategy is “the act of making plans and decisions during the game, given limited information”. Luck can give anyone the opportunity to win or lose, but purely luck based isn’t always fun. Strategy makes players feel like they have some sort of control over the outcome of the game and it is all about making choices that you think will be beneficial to your situation. Making decisions is part of what makes games fun. However, both luck and strategy are important to gameplay. 

Questions Set 1:

What Mechanics would you like to use for a game with a theme that revolves around being the size of an nanometer? I would like to use some form of mechanics that would allow you to tour each others minds.

Who are you making games for? As of right now, I have not decided what my target audience would be.

Who will be your play testers outside of class? A combination of co-workers, family, friends, and maybe some of the local rink rats.

Questions Set 2:

Can you think of a game that you were able to play without referring to the rules? Basic card games, LCR, and Mini hoops.

How do you define what a game is? A game is anthing that has an objective to solve or get to or an activity to do..

What features can make your game more intuitive? Adding a competive aspect among players, and by having more than one possible outcome.

Questions Set 3:

What was your gateway game? What do you play to introduce others to gaming? My gateway game was either monopoly or candy land.

What features do gateway games share? Gateway games are low mantience games, they are often enjoyed by families and easy to learn.

What are the 10 beautiful mechanics and what should you aim for with your own? Drawing cards, buy property, spending money, recieving money, paying rent, moving pieces, rolling dice, stacking hotels, brickering with opennts, and strategy. Including a few mechanics will draw more attraction to your game and keep your audience interested.

How does luck and game strategy factor into game play? Besides dice games and gambling strategy is a bigger factor than luck. You hold your own potential in each game based on what move you choose, Yes, sure you can get a card thrown your way that messes up your whole plan but at the end of the day you still have to stratgize how to get out of the situation.