Initially when our group discussed games that we enjoy playing, everyone enjoyed something different. A couple of us liked social, party games, one liked TTRPGs, another liked board interactive games, and one liked action-adventure games. It was going to be difficult to narrow down a specific type of game we all liked. One thing we could all agree on was how we wanted a fun, interactive game that we would enjoy playing outside of class.
We played a game called Jaws which was a random selection. Our initial impression was that we were overwhelmed by how many game pieces there were and how much time we needed to spend learning the rule book. Ultimately the game is divided into two acts with each having different pieces and cards. Act 1 had one player be the shark and the others are swimmers or crew and the goal of the swimmers is to not be eaten by the sharks and the crew’s goal is to find the sharks. The shark’s goal is to eat swimmers. The board was interactive where the board was divided into land, sea, and beaches and since each player had a different character card, it determined which spaces they could move on. General notes we had while playing this game were that we had to constantly reference the rule book for specific actions, the directions in which the different characters were allowed to movement were not always clear, sometimes the cards and space names on the board did not match the video instruction’s names for the space names and the card names, it was difficult to have lot of player interaction at times, and the only player to have some sort of fun was the shark. The players who were not the shark did not have much to do on the board or much competitive incentive. It seemed very important to be quite familiar with the movie Jaws in order to feel the incentive. Playing this game gave us insight on not making the game too complicated where we would have to reference the rules a lot. In addition, the game was just not that enjoyable with a lot of the crew/swimmers feeling bored and we would want to create a game with more engagement. Finding the right balance of simplicity and intricacy was going to be the goal and a challenge.
After playing the game and deciding on a theme, we agreed on two things: having some sort of board interactivity with tiles potentially and having it be mystery themed. We were all sad that the murder mystery game was canceled and still wanted to incorporate some of that into the game. Specifically for me, Secret Hitler and Mafia are some of my favorite games to play. There was a lot of trial and error in this process and we still do not have a definitive plan for our game yet, but the hope is to make a cooperative haunted house themed game where players add a tile on the board branching from a specific starting position. Some of the tiles will include power ups or secret ghosts. The goal is to escape the house by finding enough doors and keys. The gameplay is still in the works and the setting may change as some of us wanted the game to take place on a treasure island, similar to Lost. We would also incorporate aspects of the TRPG and have storytelling cards with specific character backgrounds. We are hoping that playing more games in class time can flesh out our game design.
2/22
In our gameplay session last week, we played Betrayal at House on the Hill. Betrayal at House on the Hill incorporated a lot of the elements that we had been thinking about for our game— a haunted house theme, tiles, and a narrative (mostly in the second part during the Haunt) to drive gameplay. After playing Betrayal, we decided that, while we wanted to preserve our core themes of tiles and a mysterious theme, we also wanted to shift our theme to make sure the game wouldn’t look too much like Betrayal. As a result, in our first meeting following the gameplay session, we decided to brainstorm new themes and ideas.
One idea that we came up with and ultimately decided to pursue was the theme of a zombie apocalypse at a mall. In our updated iteration, a group of humans venture into an abandoned mall during a zombie apocalypse and try to collect items or information to make a cure. We’ve liked the collaborative elements of games we’ve played (Jaws, Betrayal, and others) and still wanted to make a game that was collaborative. We’ve ensured that our game will still have collaborative aims by making all of the players and characters directed towards working together to make a cure. With tile placement as an element of our game, players are also able to explore the mall in a similar fashion to how tiles reveal rooms and hallways in Betrayal.
In another meeting this week, we continued to think of ideas for how the theme would look, and how the board itself would look. We decided that players will be able to carry various items (weapons, ingredients, or other items) that they can strategically use throughout the game, either to benefit themself or another player. We also decided that players would have health and other statistics to help determine and dictate gameplay. These statistical elements and narrative backstories that we’ve created for characters are aimed to encourage players to feel more connected to their characters and in turn to the game itself.
As we came up with the various locations on the map, we decided a few things. Firstly, we decided that we would come up with additional location tiles so that players could shuffle these cards and have a novel feel for the mall’s geography with each gameplay. We also decided that these locations should have unique attributes, such as items or ingredients that players could engage with. To make the game more cohesive with respect to gathering items, we came up with ingredients and then grouped them together with locations that would make sense in where to find them. Some of the elements allow characters to regenerate health, while others— like weapons— allow players to fight zombies. Although the weapons are single use, some special items exist that benefit a player permanently.
Both Jaws and Betrayal had multiple ‘scenes’ within the game. We felt that Betrayal did a better job with this bifurcation in making sure the game didn’t feel clunky (like two conjoined games), but we nonetheless decided that we would prefer to keep our game to a single moment rather than multiple scenes. We’ll see if we end up including multiple layers (a ground floor/basement/etc.) or try to incorporate more scenes, and we are still workshopping all of the elements and will see how our gameplay test goes in our next class session. After coming up with many elements to give the game shape and character, though, we brainstormed for a name. Ultimately, we felt that the most fitting name for our game is
In our gameplay session last week, we played Betrayal at House on the Hill. Betrayal at House on the Hill incorporated a lot of the elements that we had been thinking about for our game— a haunted house theme, tiles, and a narrative (mostly in the second part during the Haunt) to drive gameplay. After playing Betrayal, we decided that, while we wanted to preserve our core themes of tiles and a mysterious theme, we also wanted to shift our theme to make sure the game wouldn’t look too much like Betrayal. As a result, in our first meeting following the gameplay session, we decided to brainstorm new themes and ideas.
One idea that we came up with and ultimately decided to pursue was the theme of a zombie apocalypse at a mall. In our updated iteration, a group of humans venture into an abandoned mall during a zombie apocalypse and try to collect items or information to make a cure. We’ve liked the collaborative elements of games we’ve played (Jaws, Betrayal, and others) and still wanted to make a game that was collaborative. We’ve ensured that our game will still have collaborative aims by making all of the players and characters directed towards working together to make a cure. With tile placement as an element of our game, players are also able to explore the mall in a similar fashion to how tiles reveal rooms and hallways in Betrayal.
In another meeting this week, we continued to think of ideas for how the theme would look, and how the board itself would look. We decided that players will be able to carry various items (weapons, ingredients, or other items) that they can strategically use throughout the game, either to benefit themself or another player. We also decided that players would have health and other statistics to help determine and dictate gameplay. These statistical elements and narrative backstories that we’ve created for characters are aimed to encourage players to feel more connected to their characters and in turn to the game itself.
As we came up with the various locations on the map, we decided a few things. Firstly, we decided that we would come up with additional location tiles so that players could shuffle these cards and have a novel feel for the mall’s geography with each gameplay. We also decided that these locations should have unique attributes, such as items or ingredients that players could engage with. To make the game more cohesive with respect to gathering items, we came up with ingredients and then grouped them together with locations that would make sense in where to find them. Some of the elements allow characters to regenerate health, while others— like weapons— allow players to fight zombies. Although the weapons are single use, some special items exist that benefit a player permanently.
Both Jaws and Betrayal had multiple ‘scenes’ within the game. We felt that Betrayal did a better job with this bifurcation in making sure the game didn’t feel clunky (like two conjoined games), but we nonetheless decided that we would prefer to keep our game to a single moment rather than multiple scenes. We’ll see if we end up including multiple layers (a ground floor/basement/etc.) or try to incorporate more scenes, and we are still workshopping all of the elements and will see how our gameplay test goes in our next class session. After coming up with many elements to give the game shape and character, though, we brainstormed for a name. Ultimately, we felt that the most fitting name for our game is
“Mall of the Undead: Mega-Valid-Awesome-Electric-Verified-Ghost-Zombie-Mall-Game: Adventure in the Mall”.
2/29
Disaster at the Hospital: Post Earthquake: Mega-Valid-Awesome-Electric-Verified-Earthquake-Hospital-Lab-Game: Adventure in the Hospital Lab: Finding the Key and Vaccine
Last Thursday’s playtest was an enlightening experience for our game play. There were bigger structural issues to the game such as if the game was more cooperative or competition based, if there was too much randomness involved, and if the players were having fun. We quickly realized our game had a long rule book and there were many moving components. Many of us advocated for the tile placement component of the game, but it resulted in too much randomness and not much to do because players did not have much information on the layout of the board and if they could strategize placement. In our game meetings from this week, while we tried to save the tile placement component, we decided to scratch it because it also did not give much for the players to do except place mall tiles. Continuing on, there were issues with the actual gameplay and players were often confused with our rules. Our game included zombie characters which the humans were playing against, but since these are NPCs and no one in the game is technically a zombie, players were often unsure on how to move them and if they should cure or kill them and if the ultimate goal was to cure them. Our gameplay was also too easy, as it was easy for players to find the cure.
In addition, two people from our group played other games during class and this inspired us to make significant changes to our zombie game. One of the games specifically had a short 1-2 page rule book and it made it fun and easy to learn. Another one of the games had a long rule book that took the entirety of our gameplay session and we were unable to even start playing. We felt this could’ve taken away enjoyment from our game as well and there might be too many moving components. We decided to change the concept of our game entirely and instead of having the players place tiles and collect ingredients, we established an actual board and now the players only have to collect two things on the board. We also established the game as competitive so people could be more motivated to play.
Our new game concept revolves around a virus breaking out in a hospital after an earthquake hits and the winner of the game needs to grab a helicopter key and vaccine to escape. Each player has specific health points which depending on how much health one has, it can either add or take away board moves. Some spaces on the board also have scalpels which can allow the player to roll a D20 instead of a D12. Since we took away the tile placement aspect, we wanted the board to be interactive with the players needing to travel all around the board to get the key, vaccine, and then to the helicopter pad, which would also need them to sometimes land on unfortunate squares where they can lose health. The battle component is also interesting, as players can steal the key, scalpel, and vaccine from each other depending on the dice roll. In our gameplay session, we found small tweaks such as if we could still move on the board after acquiring one of the objects, which we agreed we could. We kept the event cards from our first game and instead made them aftershock cards which added certain benefits or drawbacks to the gameplay, which also can be played if a character lands on an empty square on the board. We also took our any NPC characters because it added additional complexities to our previous game. In addition, sometimes we wondered if it would be too difficult to acquire both the key and vaccine, but since the acquiring of them is purely chance based (dice roll), we believed that it was okay to keep in the rules- it would just make the gameplay more interesting and challenging. Overall, I think our group enjoys this version of our game much more and we simplified a lot of the conflicts from our first zombie game.
3/7
Following last week’s gameplay session, we felt fairly comfortable with where the game was at and decided not to make any major changes to the game’s theme or mechanics. When we met this week to go over notes and ideas, we mostly cleaned up minor issues that had come up from our own playtests and from the session playtests. Some of the modifications we made were related to the specifications on the rule guide, and others related to the aftershock cards.
One of the bigger changes we made related to the scalpel and its effects. We received feedback from our playing sessions that there was a mathematical imbalance to how the scalpel effect manifested— rolling a d20 rather than a d12 when attempting to steal/protecting yourself from a robbery attempt was too unfair of an advantage. To adapt to this issue, we decided to make the scalpel have the effect of allowing players to roll a d12 two times and select the higher of the two numbers.
Another change we made was in the structure of the rule book — it can be unrealistic to expect players to meticulously go through a rule book before playing a game (rather than simply getting the gist and ironing out gameplay details on the go), so we moved the “goal of the game” section nearer to the start. This way, players would be able to have more immediate direction when starting out. In our gameplay sessions, we also found that the relatively long turn durations made receiving a ‘skip a turn’ aftershock card a bummer to receive. To maintain the flow of gameplay, we remove these cards from the aftershock deck.
One of the biggest changes we made relates to player movement and low health. We received feedback during our playtests that, when players are at or near zero health, there are situations where a player may not have any agency over moving/improving their health (for example, if they have to move through a square that would automatically bring their health to zero, they would be forced to drop their items). While randomness and— at times— lack of agency are elements of the game that we in some ways embrace, we wanted to make modifications to better balance the game: we ended up including a rest mechanic in which players forgo board movement for a turn to instead roll a die to regain health. Given other elements of the gameplay— that these players remain vulnerable to stealing/aftershock events— we felt that this inclusion of a rest mechanic would make gameplay involve slightly more strategy while also establishing a risk/reward type of mechanic.
Other minor details of the game that we modified involved the water fountain and medical room. There was some confusion about the water fountain aftershock card and whether after placing it on the board the card would replace the aftershock space altogether (versus acting as a supplement where players could land on the space, draw an aftershock card, and also receive the health boost). To remedy this confusion, we modified the card itself to specify the details of the card’s functions. Another issue that arose was confusion about a wall being temporarily versus permanently blocked. To fix this, we distinguished in the mechanics between a blocked barrier that can be unlocked with a key and a permanent barrier. These distinctions depended on the narrative and how the wall became blocked. In our rule guide, we clarified for players to place two red blocks— rather than one— for permanently blocked walls.
