Readings: Paper Prototyping – 5 Facts & Advanced Prototyping

Prototyping is a rough draft of a game that you are in the process of making; and sometimes can be refered to as a final draft, but usually, it seems to imply that the game is still in the process of being developed.

It’s important to have drafts of your game/prototype because there are normally always going to be having changes to your game, and prototyping is a good way to get the ideas out there in the open. 

They can be used for digital games because they can be considered as easier systems to code or script. 

You save money by prototyping!

Reading #4: How to Prototype in Under 7 Days!

At first in the semester, I felt intimidated by this article because I felt that coming up with games was really hard, but then at the end of the semester when we were making up Muder Mystery, I felt that we really utilized the whole process.  

We took some good time to figure out a fun idea, got together on our own time to come up with some play testing and expansion on ideas for the game.

I also waited until the tail end to add the final visual details, because I wanted to make sure it was still a functioning board, instead of having to re-do a pretty board every time XD But I think it worked out pretty well!

Reading #3: Game Rules as Art!

I remember reading this article earlier in the semester, it brought a new aspect to how I should view the rules, and how deep some of the rules for games really can be. 

For example, Chess. I always knew that the king moved the way it did, but I never looked at it as “restricting his freedom”, interesting.

Reading #2: The Revolution Began With Paper!

This article was an interesting follow up to the previous article.  

Knowing the history of board games is important to a game design class because some of the greatest interactive games, and the games that bring in the most interest, are board games. These games were simple developments at one point, so it is also inspiring to hear that some of the best developers had to start simple, too; and they grew into some of the greatest family/friend hits.

If you have passion, it drives you to find a way to express yourself in a way that is not already readily available to you.  I’m passionate about team work and having fun while you are doing it. I’m also passionate about strategy, but not as much as team work.

Board games influence the digital by having a solid system to begin with.  If there is a board game that has too many holes in it, I think that not a lot of people would be willing to throw it at the digital world. 

It helps us understand the basics first (by doing board games first), I think I would have been a little too overwhelmed if we dove into digital first, because I was also new to programing.

Reading #1: Siren Song of the Paper Cutter

Wooo-hooo Paper Prototyping!  

I thought this was an interesting article.  One of the things that caught my attention was the part about making a board functional doesn’t necessarily have to mean “pretty” as well.   XD  I felt that I struggled with that element quite a bit through out the semester; making the board look good before thoroughly play testing the game. Now, I didn’t make really any “paper” games per say, but it was still interesting none-the-less. Another quote that I felt applied to some of the play testing the Murder Mystery game went through was:

If your game is hard-core strategy aimed at the professional gamer, don’t waste much time having a casual gamer play it and tell you how complex and confusing it is.                                                                                                

“flOw” is a very fun game.  I have had it downloaded onto the PS3 for several months now, and it’s very relaxing, surprisingly.  Their newest game “flOwer” is by the same developers who were, probably, using the same “Flow” system that this article discusses.

 

Final Game Challenge: Murder Mystery – Roles of Creation

Here is a list of who did what in the game development process!

 

Lauren – Made the board, and put rules on the blog. I also made my characters, Vyxen & Mytens (the vombie kitten)

Desirae – Made the 1.5″ x 1.5″  cards for the game board, also created Shirley Slyth.

Elizabeth –  Implemented the book idea for the board, and created the character, Vincentious “Theusidides” Thantos.

Stephanie –  Photo documentation, took critique notes, and made the clue check list.  She also created Takeshi Karras.

Sarah – Finalized character profiles and made the following four characters: Keven Donnens, Taiko Stephens, Tetsuo Matsumoto, and Lucy Snowe

Final Game: Gameplay and Notes!

It seems that the game generally functions pretty well out of the times that we have played it.  

 

Improvements to the board:

-2″x2″ squares for movement

-4×5 squares per room (20 total).

-I put photo corners in the spaces so that the cards could be stationary while we play through the rooms and turning pages.

-Black Folder for protection of the game board. 

 

Testing Gameplay:

When we tried to get 8 players for the game, we were denied like an ugly prom date by the other kids in our class, so we went around and asked people outside if they would be willing to play our game. Most of them said “no”. But a couple of guys from the basketball court said they would help! Yay for complete strangers!

It seems like really the only suggestions they had were to put more of an appearance factor into it so they knew where the doors were (more clearly) and some decorative stuff.  They asked a few questions throughout the gameplay: “Where do we start?” LOL! “Do we have to have these profiles?” I think was one of them too.  

Darko played our game, too.  He didn’t read the directions, so he was asking a lot of questions about it, and was saying that it sucked.  I am pretty sure that he was messing around with us though…I hope. ;_; Lol.

The weakest part of our game seems to be that sometimes it’s not always clear who the real “winner” is, but I think having it more as a perspective of a group trying to solve the mystery makes it easier.  When the whole group puts the evidence together, it’s kinda fun to see what we found. 

Lamination was a subject of interest with the clue check-list. It may be a more sustainable way to go, other than just re-printing every time. 

That’s all I have for now!

Final Challenge! Final Game – A Variation of “Clue”

The game for the final project is a group collaboration.  It’s our own spin on the classic sleuthing game, “Clue”.

The Basics:

- There are 8 Characters, and 8 rooms, 1 room that each character has an affinity with.

- There are weapons for each character.

Our Own Spin:
Instead of the classic questioning of “Clue”, we have decided to put our own unique layout to the game by implementing these different kinds of cards for game play:

-CLUE!: Evidence that has been left behind by a certain player.  Each player has 5 clues that have envidence pointing to them as the guilty one of committing the crime. Each character keeps these cards until the very end or until they are Questioned/Accused of the crime…

-Destroy Evidence: These are cards that can be used by a player that has evidence against his/her character.  So if the player is concerned that there will be too much evidence against him/her, they may choose to discard the Destroy Evidence card and the one CLUE that they wish to make void.

Questioning: This is a card that is used to question the entire group of players for CLUEs.

Accusation: This is a card that is only used for one specific person.  A player in possession of this card may accuse a player of committing the crime.  The player being accused may give the accuser a card that can prove or disprove them being guilty of the crime.

Game Play:

-Each room is layed out in 5×4 grid of 1.5″ x 1.5″ (8 rooms) – That open up like a book.

-The player may not move in diagonals.

-May not move back and land on original space.

-The first player to always move  is Kevin Donnens.

-The first player to leave the room may be first to move on the next room.

-The guilty one is determined by how much evidence they have against.

Challenge 12: 1st Scratch Game – “Flying Pokeballs!”

I made a game called “Flying Pokeballs”, a two shooter game that involves catching Pokemon. 

 

 

Menu Screen

 

 

 

Game Play! – Space Button To Start!

 

Two players enteract on a keyboard to try to capture as many Pokemon as possible with their Pokeballs!

Send the Pokeballs flying at the Pokemon so that they are captured and converted into points, displayed at the upper corners of the screen.

 

 

Action!

 

 

 

Player 1:

Up: “W”

Down: “X”

Shoot Pokeball: “1″

 

Player 2:

Up: Up Key

Down: Down Key

Shoot Pokeball: “0″  (zero, up top)

 

Points:

Rattata = 1 Point

Caterpie = 2 Points

Mew = 3 Points

 

Who ever has the most points at the end of 42 seconds, wins!

 

Other Info:

Julian and I made the sound effects for the boy/girl/Pokemon characters

And I combined music from Pokemon Yellow with Final Fantasy VI Music LOL!

 

Adjustments:

 

I noticed after continuous game play that a player could still get more points after the score was over, and that if you shot two pokeballs immediately after one another, you could get double the points for that pokemon.  So I fixed both of those issues.  The third issue was that I put variables to be specific to one pokeball, but not universal to both, so that was fixed as well, and made my game end after 20-25 points, instead of 42 seconds, like before.

Challenge #10: “Awareness Pursuit”

“Awareness Pursuit” is a game designed to educated its audience on repressed narratives, conflict between different cultures, and what we may have been conditioned to believe about narratives, such as ours.

 

The goal of the game is sucessfully answer two questions from each category: Entertainment, and Stats (20 questions for each category, at the moment).

1.) Entertainment:  This involves the stories of genocide, repression, and other hard parts of nations’ narratives that are portrayed through film, TV, theater, and music.

2.) Stats:  This involves mostly numbers from data sets that give out estimations of victims/death during a certain event.

 

There must be at least 2 Players, and one Quiz Master for each game.   The youngest person starts the game by choosing a category to draw a card from.

At first, I had each person let me ask them a question exclusively.  I quickly realized that it may be more of a captivating game if I ask the question and the players “buzz in”  So, there is incentive to get points if you know the question, and you don’t get penalized for an entire round. 

 

For each correctly answered question, the player will recieve a token! Woohoo!

 

Playing Through Observations:

 

The players seemed to instantly become more interested in the game once the “buzzing in” element came into play.  Lol!  It also meets what I wanted for my goal, that educating people on this matter can be fun, too.

 

One of the suggestions was more questions and/or categories, which I agree with, I will probably open up another category, then add an equal amount of questions to the previous categories. 

 

I question the heaviness of the game because I was confused about a comment that was made towards the relevence of some of the information on the question cards.  

 

Overall though, I feel like the players had a good time playing the game, and I am going to work on another category and more questions for Wednesday.