Author: Mia

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Brain Cells

Payers- 3-6 players

Objective- Be the first to collect 5 brain cells 

Materials- Trivia cards, brain cell tokens, memory cards, and whiteboards. 

Set-up- First, shuffle the trivia cards and set them in a pile. Next, shuffle the memory cards and lay out all of them face down. 

Starting the game- To start the game the person who broke a bone most recently will start first if no one broke a bone the shortest person starts. This person will then be the judge for the first round. During the first round, the judge will pick and then read the trivia question to the rest of the players. After the first round, the remaining players will flip two of the memory cards over to try and find a match. If players find a match they will discard the matched cards and receive a brain cell token. After these two rounds, the judge will rotate clockwise and repeat. 

Round 1- During round one the judge will read the trivia question to the group without showing the card since the answer will be written on the card. The players will then write their answers on the whiteboard and when everyone is ready they will all flip their boards at the same time. Whoever got the question right will move to round two, if not, you will play when the judge switches. If no one got the question right, the judge will have the chance to move to round two. 

Round 2- During round 2, the players who have made it through will be able to pick two memory cards and flip them over. If they are a match, you will remove those cards and place them in a discard pile and receive a brain cell token. If they are not a match, you will simply turn them back over. Once everyone has taken their turn the judge will then change and you will start back over. 

Discard pile- If all the memory cards are chosen, you can re-shuffle the cards and lay them back out. 

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Divided (Mia and Clay)

2 players

  • Objective: Collect more pairs than your opponent as fast as you can over the course of 5 rounds
  • Required materials:
    • 1 deck of cards
      • Remove face cards and jokers
  • Setup:
    • Each player is dealt 6 six cards to start
  • On a player’s turn
    • The player with the least amount of pairs goes first
    • You can’t look at your hand until you draw your first card
  • On a player’s turn:
    • Draw a card
    • Your “turn” is over once you have drawn
      • You may draw immediately after your opponent has drawn
  • At any time:
    • Place a pair in front of you. A pair consists of:
      • Two cards that are cleanly divisible (eg. 3/9, 10/10, A/7)
        • Aces are worth 1 and any card is divisible by it (Wild card)
  • Ending the round:
    • The round ends when either player has no cards remaining in their hand
    • Players write down how many pairs they have played in front of them
  • Winning the game
    • After 5 rounds, players sum up their total number of pairs from the course of the game
    • The player with the most pairs wins
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Part 3 Questions

  1. What is the difference between a game designer and a game developer? What commonly occurs during the game development process? 

 A game designer is the person that comes up with the idea or inspiration for the game and the developer is the person that takes these ideas and creates a finished product. Usually the developer will play test the game and write down any questions they may have to fully grasp the game. They would then break down the game and look further into the mechanics that the game uses and makes sure that each are necessary so the players dont get to confused. Then they would go more into depth with the rules, title and theming of the game.   

  1. what are the challenges of balancing a game? What should every player of your game believe? Why? How can you avoid stealing players’ fun?

One chanllage can be number, meaning to have multiple components to keep the game fun and interesting, However if you have to many components the game can be confusing and also introduce a number if different possible interactions with other players. Each player should feel that they have an equale chance to win the game when given a rule set. As well as having the players believe they can win before the game ends. This also goes into how to avoid stealing a players fun. You can avoid this by not kicking the player out of the game before its over. Some games you can already tell your gonna lose before the game is even over and that isnt fun at all. Also to avoid a kingmaking, which is a player that can choose someone to win but not choose themselves. Another rule is not reward the leader, someone shouldnt have the best position just because they went first. 

  1. What 10 maxims should you follow when writing rules? 

Use real words, Make no more extra work than necessary, Add flavor, Make your text no smarter than your readers, Discard rules that cant be written, Take a breath, Go easy on the eyes, Get your final version playtested and Fix it in the FAQ

  1. How has play testing changed your game? Who from class would you like to playtest your next game or version 2 of your first game? who is the audience for your game? 

Play testing has changed the game I had a ton. I remember making my dad read my rule set and had him set it up and explain it back to me. Right from the start I could already tell stuff is wrong. I had to go back and rewrite rules and make things a little more clear. I even ended up scapping an entire mechanic by having him play a couple of rounds. I got a version I was happy with and I had my classmates test it and even still there were issues that needed to be fixed. Like some how everyone kept ruling evens which had them fight “boss” cards which had a higher health bar and most of the players didnt have a weapon in time to even have a chance of beating it. Two players ended up getting out rather quickly while the other two had a slow end, in which they didnt even win and they both ended up getting out too. The people I would like to test for my next game is, Ronan, River, Clay, Delany and Max. Ive tested with this group before and they all give good feed back on the game play as well as ways to change it if needed. For my next game, the audience im targeting is mainly 12+, its going to be a trivia/memory game. 

5. Who should playtest your game outside of class?

 I would have my brother who is 15, my dad who is 46 and my sister who is 29.  I feel that they would be honest about stuff that wouldn’t work in my game as well as they all are in different age groups.

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Review 2

The site I chose to do is “Creative South ’23”. The thing that caught my eye was the colors of this page . They seem kinda retro and ultimately are eye-catching. The next thing I noticed was the title of the page says “Pure” and it has this ombre 3D text behind it. When you move your curser the 3D text behind it moves with the curser. I personally love this because it is fun to play with and creates a type of texture instead of being flat. The website has an easy straightforward function with scrolling and maneuvering through the site. When scrolling down the site shows the different artists and they are encased in different glasses. Hovering the cursor over the glasses they kind of tilt up to show you that you can click on that object. All in all, I feel that this site works really well, as well as standing out with its different little motions when going through the site. Another way this site adds character is how it uses color and it keeps the same color theme throughout the site.

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Game rules for “The Wood”

  • The objective of the game is to defeat all the mythical creatures in the forest and make it out alive. 
  • This game will include 1 board, 5 player cards, 5 pawns, 20 special action cards, 50 action cards, 15 boss cards, 15 battle cards, and 2 dice
  • The board should be laid out and place the number of pawns of people playing at the start. Next, each player should have the player card that corresponds to their pawn. Then shuffle all the special action and action cards together, each player will get 5 cards then they will be placed in their designated spot on the board. Action cards can include armor that can be placed on your character card, weapons, skip turns, and other special events. Then shuffle the battle and boss cards and place them in their spot on the board. To determine who goes first is to have every player roll the dice and whoever rolls the highest goes first.
  • Armor cards- can be placed on your player card to add protection, You can stack up to 5 cards including a helmet, chest plate, pants, shoes, and a shield
  • Weapon cards- different weapons are spread out with different kinds and different strengths, displayed on the card
  • On each player’s turn, they will rule a die and whatever space they land on determines their next move. They can land on a blue space which is pick up an action card, red space roll dice and go back that many, orange is a safe space, and black is pick from battle cards. When you get a battle card you have to fight the creature that is on it. Each creature card has the amount of health they have. Players can use their weapons to fight the creatures. Each weapon should have the amount of damage it will do and the player must roll the dice to see how many swings they get. For example, if my weapon was 10 XP and I roll a 4, I’m able to take 40 damage on the creature. If the creature was 30 XP I would have beaten it and then roll again for my next move.
  • To win you have to be the first to make it out of the forest

Updated rules for the wood

Objective- Be the first to get 20 tokens 

Rules-  Can only have 4 cards in the hand unless the card says otherwise.

Odd number roll = Battle card

Even number roll= Boss card

Battle cards=1 token

Boss cards=2 tokens 

Set up – Every player gets 1 player card, 4 action cards, and 4 pawns. Shuffle action and weapons cards and place them in one pile. Separate battle and battle boss cards and place them in another two piles.  

To start– Pick any player to start first. On each turn, a player will roll the dice to see what monster they will fight and then pick an action card. When facing a monster, the player will roll the dice again to determine how many strikes they get to take. If you don’t defeat the monster in that turn, you lose a pawn.  If you beat the monster you get a token, the battle card determines how many tokens you get. If you lose all your pawns, you are out of the game. 

Skip turn- This card can skip your turn so you don’t have to fight a monster 

Potion- You can use this card to gain a pawn in exchange for 1 token

Retreat- You can use this card to get out of a fight with a monster

Weapons- These can be used to fight the monsters. For example, if you get a weapon that is 10 exp and you roll a 5 that is 50 damage on a monster. 

Bomb- The bomb card adds 10 extra damage to your roll. This must be played before you roll for your strike damage. 

Attack Damage- This gets added to your weapons exp. Can only use once then the card must be discarded

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Week 5-Game Ideas

  1. “Potted” everyone picks a pot to play as and has to go around the board and collect their specific petals as fast as they can. 
  2. In “Crystal Mayhem” every player gets a sheet of crystals to collect and they have to go through different caves and find them. 
  3. In “Mixology” every player gets drink menu cards and has to collect the ingredients the fastest, whoever gets 10 drinks made wins. 
  4. “Traffic Cone” each player has to collect traffic cones that are placed around the board by stacking them on top of the player’s pawn, however, if any fall at any point you lose those cones. 
  5. “Brain cell” is a memory game and the more pairs of cards you can collect and put together the more brain cells you get, player with the most pairs win. 
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Week 5- Thoughts on “Bang”

I liked this game more than I thought I would. It was fun to see everyone try to figure out who was who as well as trying to kill the sheriff. I played with 5 people and I wonder If we played with more the guns would come in more handy. Some guns allowed you to shoot at certain distances but because there were only 5 you could pretty much shoot everyone with whatever gun you got. The mechanics of the game were pretty easy to follow and the instructions were easy to read and look back on if anyone had any questions about the cards. One thing I did notice was I found it odd that we used bullets as our lives when initially I thought we would use those to shoot other people. Otherwise, I felt this is a well crafted game where practically any age group could play and understand. 

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Week 4- Game Ideas

Theme- Survival 

  1. “Post Apocalypse”, the characters in the game have to survive the elements of different regions to make it to the safe house. 
  2. “World Takeover ”, the players in the game have to expand their colonies the fastest. This can include trade, settling and even battling other players for land. 
  3. “Imposter” , in an Alien infested world a group of people have to try to stay hidden and collect supplies to survive. However, someone in the group isn’t who they say they are, the imposter’s job is to steer the group away from supplies and kill them off. 
  4. “The parent”, the players are children and they notice something isn’t right with their parents, their job is to survive the obstacles their parents create and get out of the house
  5. “The wood”, the players have to make it out of the woods without being eaten or trapped by the mythical creatures in the forest. 
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Review 1-Rightstuffanime.com

The website I chose to do is rightstuffanime.com. I’m a huge manga collector and sometimes, Barnes and Noble doesn’t have the book I’m looking for, so I head to right stuff anime to buy manga. Although I use it mainly for manga it offers multiple other products like CDs, figures, games, and apparel.

When you first open the site it usually always has a pop-up that offers 10% off your order if you give them your email. The homepage of the site shows the search bar promptly placed in the top middle of the site and under it has the different categories of items you can shop for. It’s nice that when you hover your cursor over each category, it underlines that subject so you as the user know for sure that you can click on it. Under the categories, it has a small slide show that shows the deals for the week or weekend and then offers new items coming. As you scroll down you can see other featured and popular items. If you scroll to the bottom they have a plethora of different links that are categorized with “Let us help you”, “Get to know us”, “Just the FAQs”, and “The fun stuff”. I feel this is important to a website because if customers have questions on returns or other items they can easily scroll down and find where to go. 

The color scheme of this website is red, white, and blue, although blue is less predominant than red and white. While clicking on the manga category it has a drop-down menu that allows you to choose whether you want to shop by genre or book categories. This is a good thing to add because shopping online for books can be difficult and overwhelming, having it already broken down can help the user ask fewer questions and be easy to follow. I then chose the manga and it loaded up a page where you can look at all the different options they offer. It states how many products there are and on the left side, it allows the user to narrow down their search. For example, it shows different authors, themes, what’s in stock, and other deals they are having. Above the books it also allows the user to choose how many books are shown on each page and how you would like it organized to allow the experience to be easier.

While looking at the books it first shows the front cover of the book and has the title right below it. This is useful since many people like to skim over a page and it’s easier for them to look at pictures than read the title. Below that it shows the rating of the book, then shows a retail price and what the site’s price is. This is a good decision because it makes the user think/know they are getting a good deal and they are saving money by buying off this site instead of competitors. However, with the rating, it seems most books don’t have a rating and it might be more beneficial to remove the stars to create more space. Below the price it allows you to select the quantity and add it to the cart, right below that shows whether the item is in stock, some items are out of stock and expecting more, and pre-orders with the date it will ship out. Once you click add to cart, it has a pop-up of what you added with all the item’s information and then provides two separate options of whether you would like to view your cart and check out or continue shopping. The view your cart is a red button which matches the color scheme and the continue shopping is a white button with a black outline and has its letters the color blue which also matches. If you hover over the red button it deepens its color to show you on top of it and for the white button, it flips the colors making the button blue and the text white. 

If you decided to keep looking and chose to continue shopping, it takes you right back to where you were while browsing. In the right-hand corner of the site, it shows a picture of a shopping cart and the number of items you have. This is a good design because it saves on space as well as is easy to see. Also, it would take more time for a user to read out the shopping cart whereas having a picture clearly states what it is. Also what works is if you hover over the shopping cart it has a small drop-down menu of what’s inside. This also saves time for the user instead of clicking on it. When you get to the checkout menu it gives the description of each book you selected on the left and on the right it gives you your subtotal and allows you to enter any promo codes. I appreciate how this website allows you to put in the promo code before you move to your payment to see the total before entering your card information. Afterward,  you would enter all your personal and shipping information. 

Furthermore, rightstuffanime.com proves to be user-friendly. Although it has a ton of products, it makes browsing its website easy to understand for all ages. The navigation element is made with the options of different categories and labeled icons. Most sites like this can be overwhelming and this site tackles that with clearly labeled icons and a clean crisp look. It doesn’t have any weird or super bright colors and doesn’t have any distracting pictures plastered everywhere. 

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Week 2- Thoughts on gloom munchkin and love letter

I wasn’t a fan of gloom munchkin, mostly because I thought the game rules were too complicated and a lot was going on before starting the game. However, I enjoyed the love letter. I feel this game was straight to the point and was easy to follow. It also seemed to get more competitive when other players started to collect the tokens of affection. I also enjoyed how each round of this game could either go fast or slow. As well as determining how fast you can be out of a round, there were some times I was out on my first turn and then there were others when I made It to just me and another player.

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Week 3- Game Ideas

  1. Farmland is a lifestyle game in which the farmers have to have the best farm by selling crops and upgrading their tools throughout the game.
  2. Peepers is a mystery game in which a group of teens tries to solve a mystery about a student who went missing, by collecting evidence through the game while being watched by a killer. 
  3. Choices is an action-adventure game in which cave explorers have to work together to try to get out of the cave by strategizing ways on picking certain paths.
  4. Sunken is a puzzle game in which the crew members work together to try and escape a sunken ship by solving puzzles quickly enough.
  5. The island is a survival game in which crash survivors work together to survive and create a way to call for help by using anything that is provided from the island and plane crash. 
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Week 3- Thoughts on pandemic

I actually quite enjoyed this game and want to buy it for myself. The metaphor it used was fighting off infections and trying to stop the spread as well as find a cure. I liked how this game made you work together and try to strategies the best way to clear the diseases. At first, my group almost completely failed since we only cured one disease but the second time we played we got the hang of how the game worked and we started to read more about the characters we were playing and chose which ones would be best to try to beat the game. We still ended up losing but we ended up curing three diseases which were further than the first time.

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Week 2- Card Game Ideas

  1. You get a normal deck of cards and take the number of players playing cards out of the deck, so if there are 4 players 4 random cards get taken out and put in the middle spread out. Every player gets 4 cards and has to keep 4 cards in their hand at all times. There is one dealer, the dealer picks up a card from their deck to see if they want to keep it or toss it to the player on their left. The goal is to get a straight the fastest, if you get a straight you pick one of the cards in the middle and so does everyone else, whoever has the lowest card losses. 
  2. A group of 4+ players all sit in a circle and have a deck of cards in the middle with dice. The first person to start will pick a card and the card has different statements on them, the person will read the card and show the card to the person to their left and then that person will choose who fits that card the best. They will then roll the dice and if it’s an odd number they have to read the card out loud if it’s even they keep the card to themselves and the rest of the group won’t know what it said. 
  3. This game is a twist on truth or dare. There are two decks of cards: one truth, one dare, and a dice. The dice have three colors on them, blue for truth, black for dare and pink means you can ask another player to do a truth or dare that’s up to you. If you refuse a dare or truth, the group gets to choose a dare for you and you don’t get the card. A player with the first 10 cards wins. 
  4. This game is a 4-8 player game, One deck of cards has 1 card with a skull and 7 cards with a check mark, depending on how many players you will have the same amount of cards as how many players and there will always be a skull in the mix. The cards will be spread out in a line in the middle of the group and then each player will pick a card at random and if they get the skull they will have to do a dare and lose a life. Each player has five lives. Whoever lasts the longest wins. 
  5. This is a two-player card game, each player starts with 4 cards, and then the rest of the deck is placed between them. Each player will take turns picking from the deck and trying to make as many runs as they can before the deck runs out. 
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Week 2- Questions

  1. 1. I feel that I would like to see that the character that Im playing is very limited in what they can do and maybe have it that my character has to come up with different ways to complete task.

2. I would say I want to make games for young adults

3. My brother, since he is obsessed with games in general I feel he would have a good opinion and provide feedback 

2. 1. UNO

2. A game to me is following a set rule list that has a sort of victory at the end

3. To make a game more intuitive, I think that means to have game mechanisms be w. hat people naturally want to do. Like in UNO, TECHNICALLY you’re not supposed to stack the +4 with a +2 but everyone kinda naturally does it. 

3. 1. My first game that I played mostly by myself was probably guitar hero. A gateway game to introduce to other people is probably Mario party or jack box

2. In my opinion, gateway games have to be easy, to the point and have an eye-catching theme. You cant have any complicated controls like pressing A B at the same time as you move the joystick to the right. Or even in card games, you usually won’t start a person out with poker or Rumi. Gateway games should be a game that pretty much all ages can understand. 

4. 1 would be uncertainty, although each player may or may not be created equal certain events in the game can determine players’ win or loss. 2 making hard decisions. 3, creating different strategies. 4, Turning a card “on” or “off” by flipping it 90 degrees. 5, In battle cattle, you had a weight that your cow is and when it knew over you have to roll a dice to determine whether your cow stands back up or stays knocked over. 6, “Popping” cards, if symbols matched after you spin a card then you compare numbers, the lower numbered card pops off the board. 7, Keeping your cards in order and not rearranging them. 8, Seems kinda like guessing and hoping you pick the right speed to make a delivery but you as the player have no idea where you’re going. 9, a Guessing game where you only have a short amount of time to give the other player clues on who it is. 10, playing a few cards then discarding your entire hand, then picking up more cards playing a few then discarding the rest, which ultimately makes you reshuffle the deck.  

Out of these 10 mechanisms, my favorite that I would like to use is the first and last one, I like the uncertainty of things and it depends on how others play the game and what events come next. For the last one, I feel it keeps everyone on guard because you don’t fully know what everyone’s plan is and what you going to be delt next. 

5. Agreeing with the book, I feel luck and strategy play alongside each other. In a game, you are probably coming up with multiple decisions on what to do next and how it can affect your game. Luck comes into play when one of your strategies plays out. If you need this one card and you got it to complete your plan then that is luck, but you usually have a backup plan because you’re not always going to get the exact thing you need to win or complete your strategy. 

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Week 1-Game Ideas

  1. A group of players is blindfolded and scattered across a field and they are infected. Another group of players has to make it across the same field to grab objects and bring them back while avoiding the infected.
  2. In a field playing tick tac toe but you have to throw frisbees to mark the x’s and o’s
  3. Two teams are at separate ends of a field with a rock between them that marks the middle. Each team is in a single line, the person in the front has to run to meet the other team in the middle and play rock, paper, scissors. If you win, you continue to run toward the opposite team to win, if you lose, the person has to run and cut the opposing team off from reaching them.
  4. Pieces of a puzzle are scattered in zones across campus. There can be multiple groups but group 1 has to look in zone 1 for their piece of the puzzle and have to find all the pieces to complete the puzzle before the other teams.
  5. A group of people agrees on a word and whenever that word is said you have to avoid the floor like its lava for 2 min. If you don’t make it off the floor your out and if anyone catches you not following the rules, your out.