Members: Jio Kim, Sara Hoggatt
Meeting 1
1/12 4:30~6:00
[Making the big structure]- The first meeting was about brainstorming the possible ideas. However, we moved on to discussing the details of the game pretty quickly because we both liked the idea that Sara brought up. The idea was, making a game that is about finding a planet in space, and the board of the game would be a circle.
- We started with specifying the type of the game. It would be a strategy game that requires the players to start from the edge of the circle and get to the center of it, while collecting resources on their way. The ultimate goal would be to get to the center planet with as many resources as they can. We introduced the resource of “oxygen” as the resource required to move in the board. If a player used up all of the oxygen and could not get to the center planet, they would automatically become a loser, which we call “space trash”.
- We took notes along the way of discussion. The specific amounts of game components (fuel, resources, etc.) are listed out in the note so we can change them later if needed.
- First, we decided how the players would move on the board. The circle will consist of 5 inner circles and 12 vertical lines. Each player will move on the lines and get to an intersection to collect resources — an action we call “mining”. Then, we listed out what will happen if two or more players meet at the same intersection.
- The term “oxygen” was later changed to “fuel” since this is what makes a spaceship move. The basic rule of motion is “more gravity, more fuel”. Thus, we specified how much fuel it will take to go in, out, left, and right in the space. Next, we discussed how many resources should be placed. In order to make this game playable for different numbers of players, we decided to make it 10 resources per person. After mapping out all of these details, we set the initial number of fuels as 10.
Meeting 2
1/14 4:00~6:30
[Making the physical board game]- After making a few small adjustments to the rule, we worked on the physical pieces of the board game. We made the board by drawing circles on the paper, and found adequate pieces of tokens in the MAAD center.
- We playtested the game with 2 players. The time approximately took 15 minutes and we shared some feedback. One problem we saw was that there were too many fuels left in the end. We picked up most of the resources on the board, but there were still a lot more fuels in the players’ hands. The abundance of fuel caused the game to feel a bit lack of excitement. Thus, we decided to make fuel more scarce by decreasing the number of fuel resources on the board, decreasing the amount of fuel tokens from 2 to 1 per person. Also, we decreased the amount of resources in the UFO from 10 to 7.
- After the first playtest, we invited our TA, Eren, to help playtest the game. The effects of decreasing the amount of fuel on the board immediately showed as we all were short of fuel all the time. This added more spice to the game and made it more interesting. After the game, Eren gave us quite a lot of useful feedback. We decided to make more adjustments according to them.
