Board Game Design
May 9, 2021
Galactic Foundry (Postmortem)
Game Summary
Once a civilization has reached type one, finished exploiting their planet, they must look to the stars in order to fuel the increasing demands of their civilization. Space is vast and the Players civilization may not be the only thriving empire.
Target Audience
The target audience of Galactic Foundry is 15+ and is aimed at players that enjoy exploration, strategy and space themed games. The player types that will enjoy Galactic Foundry include competitor, explorer, achiever and craftsman. Galactic Foundry has a player vs player interaction pattern.
Problems
The overall development of our game went fairly smoothly. Our team had an idea that we were able to maintain and agree on obtainable goals throughout each sprint of the game. During our discussion we would write out the ideas we wanted to implement as mechanics and sculpt them to either fit the constraints or time frame of the project.
Terminology:
While overall production progressed smoothly and easily there were concerns brought up from our play testers that we were able to focus and correct or improve. One of the early issues our playtesters addressed was inconsistent terminology used between our player board and rule sheet. This was an issue created by the division of work between team members but once the issue was discovered by our playtesters it was an easy issue to remedy.
Ship Management:
Another problem that arose while creating our game was how to allow players to manage the various resources our game uses. Initially in our design for the game we wanted to have ships that could be used to explore surrounding tiles and ultimately moved off the player board as a means to attack competing players. While this idea was something that could be implemented we decided to change the mechanic because we felt that ship movement would be too difficult to keep track of as our players were playing through an online format instead of in person. So we decided to reduce the scope to attacking ships and defending ships that players can keep track of on a board. While this worked we did find our first iteration of the board was difficult to navigate due to the arrangement of the numbers and we decided to change the number arrangement to make it easier for players.
Combat:
As our playtesters and our team played more and more of the game we discovered that our initial plans of combat between players needed to be rebalanced to make the game fair. We originally had attackers roll one dice while defenders roll two and take the best between the two numbers. But we found that defenders had a huge advantage not just because of the extra dice but because they also won ties between the dice rolls. So to balance the game we instead decided to have both attacker and defender roll only one dice but retain that defender win ties. Making these combat changes had the added benefit of speeding up the play time of our game.
Colonies:
During playtesting we also noticed our players had a difficult time keeping track of which colonies they’d colonized and which ones they still needed to colonize. So we decided to remove the colonize feature of the game in its entirety. Now when players come across a tile that can be colonized they automatically have access to the resources in their subsequent turns. Removing the colonizing feature had the added benefit of speeding up the play time of the game.
Conclusion
The overall development of our game went incredibly well. Our team was able to achieve nearly all of our objectives and implement the mechanics we decided upon during our brainstorming session. Some of the changes we would like to make to the game were features or mechanics we changed due to time constraints and the challenges of an online format. We could have liked to have maintained ships that move around the player board. We also wanted to make the players line up their boards so they can move across the board to attack each other. Our team plans to continue development of Galactic Foundry and implement all our original ideas that we modified to work within the confines of an online format. We want players to be able to set up defensive stations and conquer territory while they build ships and discover new worlds.
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April 25, 2021
Galactic Foundry
Game Summary
Galactic Foundry is a two player galactic strategy game. The premise of the game is Humanity has achieved a type one society and is looking to the stars for expansion. Space is vast and players compete against each other’s thriving empires.
Iteration Process
Our team began with a great idea and a lot of material to work with. The scope of our game began very large and has been refined to be easier to play in a relatively short period of time. We wanted our players to experience exploration of their board without creating a board that once players were familiar with the board layout might mold their choices and gameplay. So we decided to create a board of tiled components that are laid out in a circular pattern from their starting point. The tiles are shuffled before each game and placed upside down so players are unaware what resources or events they will encounter. Creating a player board in this manner changed the game with every play through.
Here’s an image of our player board with the blue tile at the center representing the player’s core planet and the lighter and darker hexagons representing space to be explored by the player.
In our first iteration of the game we wanted to allow players to explore their solar system and movie ships around their board. But we discovered that the mechanic would rely heavily on various tokens to keep track of player movement, attacking, defending and exploration. From my previous experience with a similar game I designed I was given the feedback that relying on tokens made the game more difficult for the players to manage. Our team discussed other avenues to convey the idea of ship management and resource management in our game without the reliance of tokens. For our second iteration we decided to use player cards in which the players can keep track of ship units and resource accruement.
Team Management
To increase workflow and time management our team has split the workload between art assets/player boards and game mechanics. Our team discusses how we want to implement a mechanic and once an agreement has been made half the team creates the assets needed for the mechanic while the other half works on implementation and documentation to the rule sheet. The division of labor has allowed us to maintain deadlines and added more elements to our game.
Problems Encountered
The main issue our game has encountered has been the scope of mechanics we initially wanted to implement. Our team has had a plethora of ideas and mechanics that can be implemented into our game. But implementing all the mechanics initially discussed would increase the amount of time our player base would have to invest in understanding mechanics. To make games quicker and easier on our players we discuss ways in which we can keep the core idea of a mechanic and better implement it or remove a mechanic to make gameplay quicker. Communication has been invaluable in reevaluating the scope of our game and managing all the mechanics initially decided on. Our team has been able to either keep mechanics or rework them in a way that reduces time investment from our players.
Going Forward
As we move forward into our next sprint our team will proceed with management and cooperation in the same fashion we have been so far. Our team has great communication and team work as we implement the ideas of our original concept. As we play our game more we will have to better balance our resource acquisition and combat mechanics. Our play testing will expose if some resources are acquired to quickly or and mechanics that can be exploited.
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Star Farm
Game Summary
Humanity has spread itself across the solar system. Corporations compete against each other to provide food amongst the colonies in the outer belt. Become the largest corporate farm in the solar system and take over the competition.
Star Farm is a two player game in which players compete against each other to improve their resource acquisition while creating crops. As a player’s station improves, players grow crops worth a higher point value. Players foil the progression of competing stations by buying patents on technology improvements and preventing technology bonuses.
Target Audience
Star Farm’s target audience is players from age 15-22. Star Farm appeals to this demographic by using science fiction elements as the setting for the game. The player types that would be interested in playing Star Farm are; competitors, collectors, achievers, jokers and craftsmen. The Player Interaction Pattern for Star Farm is player vs player. The Star Farm rules are quick and easy to understand but Star Farm has incorporated elements in which players can directly impact competing players. The component to impact other players is accomplished by creating technology cards with set bonuses when owned by the same player. Players can purchase a technology before a player who would benefit from its effects can purchase the card. The depth of mechanics and strategy would appeal to our age demographic and player types.
Problems Encountered
Early on in the Star Farm the size of our development team was reduced by half. The reduction of team personnel caused the scope of the game to be reduced. While there were goals for more technology and chance cards incorporated into the game, the scope of the game needed to be reduced. The original goal of technology cards was to create 30 different themed cards and themed chance cards. The amount of technology cards was reduced to 15 and chance cards were reduced to 9. The development relied on constant play tester feedback to better balance the resource gain from technology cards. Finding the appropriate balance for cards was a constant challenge during development.
Task Completion
The remainder of our team did a fantastic job completing all the goals set for the game. While some of the scope for themed card elements were narrowed, all the new goals were accomplished by the team. All the mechanics and design elements for the game were improved from week to week and completed in our final iteration of the game. Each sprint the design elements of player boards and cards were refined.
Week 1 Player Boards
Final Player Boards
The design team worked diligently to complete the artistic elements of Star Farm. The main goal of the design team was to make an aesthetically pleasing look to the game while maintaining minimal colored assets. The inability to bring the game to players required our design team to create a game that would be easily printed. Constraining the design team to a limited use of color prevented them from creating a colorful game board. Even with the color constraint the boards pop with the limited colors and the drawings add to the aesthetic and story of the game.
Managing time for development of designs and gameplay mechanics was a challenge throughout the development of Star Farm. The team stayed dedicated to the goals of the project and with better time management were able to complete the game.
Going Forward
In future designs I would like to have a larger team to better distribute the workload among members of the team. With a larger team more time can be dedicated to mechanics and design elements of the game.
March 14, 2021
Game Summary
The game our team developed is called Space Farm. Space Farm is a player vs player game with players trying to become the solar system's largest producer of crops to knock out the competition. Players gain resources every turn that can be spent on technology to grow crops faster.
Process
Our game began with a session of brainstorming to come up with ideas that could be implemented within the confines of the assignment. One of the major restraint was how to have players interact with each other without sharing a board. One of the ideas from the brainstorming session was to allow the players to hinder the advancement of a competing player by purchasing the patent of a technology card that would benefit their station.
By paying patent costs players can own the technology but won’t gain any of the benefits from the technology. If a player decides during a subsequent turn that they would like to activate the technology and gain its benefits they can play the cost of the card and use it. One of the other major challenges our team has encountered is balancing the effects of card interactions. Some of the card effects add too much of a benefit for a player while others don’t add enough of a benefit. To help with the balancing of card effects and mechanics our team has been playing testing repeatedly and receiving feedback from play testers.
Team Management
Unfortunately one of the biggest problems our team has run into is a lack of personnel. During the early development of our game we had a decrease in our team which has caused a lot of the workflow to fall on the remaining team members. At the moment our team is confident that we can implement many of the features to our board game that have been discussed during our brainstorming sessions. This has affected our ability to create many of the board game assets including art for player boards and cards.
While the decrease in our team has proven to be a set back our team has managed to create some great art for our player boards. Above is an example of our finished player board. Our team has managed to finish three different boards for players to choose from. Each with a unique location and a different distribution of resources gained every turn. One of the major goals of our design team was to create a board that was detailed and aesthetically pleasing while keeping the colors to a minimum. We encourage our design team to leave as much white on the player boards as possible to reduce the ink when printing required for our play testers.
Conclusion
The main focus for our team going forward will be to continue to playtest and balance the interaction between our technology boards and the mechanics of the game. The main focus of our team during our first sprint was to come up with ideas to make a functioning board game that fell within the constraints that were given to us. Once our team was finished with ideas and a rule sheet, our main focus for the second sprint of our project has been to complete the art asset for our player boards and cards. Once our team finished creating the player boards many of the art assets were used in the creation of the technology cards and chance cards. Once our game reaches a balanced state with the cards we have currently created our goal is to increase the amount of cards the player will have to choose from in the game.
Group 1
Feb 26, 2021
Game Summary
The game we designed is a modification to the classic card game Solitaire. In our version of Solitaire we decided we wanted to maintain the essence of the original game while creating a different way to play. The core gameplay mechanic that our development team changed involved reversing the order in which the player can stack the cards. Reversing the stack order causes stacks to begin with the lowest number and stack in sequence up to the highest number. We also decided to remove the alternating the colors of cards when making stacks.
Formal Elements
Our main player base includes: competitors, strategists and causal players from age 8 and up. The rules of our version of Solitaire are to make stacks of cards starting from Ace up to King. The stacks are achieved by moving cards from stacks on the Tableau to other cards that are of a lower number in the sequence. When the player runs out of moves on The Tableau they can use cards from The Stock by flipping over one card at a time. Resources include a standard deck of 52 playing cards, cards from The Tableau and cards from The Stock. The boundaries of the play area include The Foundations, The Tableau, The Stock and The Talon. The objective of the game is for players to align cards into four piles from lowest value to highest to complete the game. This game is a player versus game in which the outcome is that in which the player completes the alignment of the piles and wins.
Problems and Solutions
We did encounter a few problems while designing our Solitaire variation. One of the problems our team was faced with was unfamiliarity with the mechanics and gameplay of Solitaire. After our first meeting we decided to spend time researching the game before we started pitching any possible modifications to the game. Our team faced another problem after coming up with our first mechanic. We felt that while we did accomplish maintaining the essence of the original mechanics our game didn’t deviate enough to distinguish itself from the original game. Our next step to help distinguish our game was to remove the limitation of card placement by allowing cards to be placed on like colors. Our team also had a few moments of miscommunication, but we quickly resolved this problem by meeting frequently and with notes to convey our ideas moving forward.
Our team did have a lot of things that worked in our development. Early on we decided to split the work flow between game setup and rules. Half of our team focused on setup while the other half worked on writing the rules. We also were able to have many people playtest the game and provide player feedback. With the player feedback we were able to alter our rules in a way that was more cohesive and easy to understand.
Conclusions
Making modifications to such a well known and beloved game such as Solitaire did prove to be a challenge. Finding a balance between making a modified version that distinguishes itself from the original, while maintaining the essence of the original was challenging. Our team was able to make good use of our development time to come together and complete the task of creating a game modification. Moving forward with the development of future games, continuing to compartmentalize the workflow and tasks will be key to maintaining deadlines. Allowing for playtesting and player feedback is crucial for construction of an enjoyable game. Without the constant feedback from the player base the game would not have been successful. Listening to our play testers allowed us to finetune our rule sheet and develop a rule sheet that is visually appealing and understandable.
Feb 14, 2021
Game Summary
Our modification takes the classic game of Solitaire and adds a twist to the gameplay. We decided as a group that we wanted to maintain the essence of the original game while changing some of the mechanics that players familiar with Solitaire are used to.
Rule Sheet V .1
As our group began our brainstorming for a modification of the game Solitaire we realized we needed to do some research about the game. Our team had very little experience with solitaire and decided to play the game and read some rules to better understand what can be modified to change the mechanics. After playing the game numerous times we regrouped and discussed in what ways the game could be modified while maintaining the essence of what Solitaire is.
The first idea we decided on was to change the order in which the cards are stacked. We decided to have kings occupy The Foundations while an Ace would make up the base in which cards are stacked on top of each other in The Tableau. This slight modification turned out to be challenging to players familiar with Solitaire. Players are forced to fight their instincts of the original game and place cards in an order that is counter intuitive to their instincts. Our order change modification the team felt was a good way to maintain the essence of the original Solitaire while making it challenging for experienced players.
After our team had decided on how we were going to alter the game we moved on to creating a rule sheet. We split the creation of the rule sheet into two categories, half the team worked on creating the Setup and Procedures while the other half have worked on creating the rules. As we finished our first version of the rules we asked others if they could playtest the game while only following the rules. Asking others to play through our game modification allowed us to receive feedback on what ways we could improve future iterations of our rules. After our first playtesting phase we came to the conclusion that various parts of our rules would need to be updated to make them easier to understand for new players.
Rule Sheet V .2
After receiving our feedback we decided to take the portions of the rules written by our team and exchange them with the members who worked on the opposite section. We tried to go through each part of the rules with the mindset of how we would have written each section. We also focused on the clarity of the overall structure of the rule sheet. With the feedback of our play testers and a discerning eye from our team we made changes to our rules for improvement.
During our rule revision our team discussed if the changes that we made were enough to vary the gameplay. We decided going forward we would add the rule that like color (red and black) can be stacked on top of each other. This modification varies drastically from traditional Solitaire. With the addition of this new rule and the updates and clarifications to our rules our second version was finally complete.
Overview
As we move forward with our refinement of our rule sheets we are concerned with our gameplay modifications. We’ve discussed if allowing players to stack like colors on top of each other alters the difficulty of the game too much. Our team will continue to playtest and receive feedback from our play testers to find a balance in difficulty for our modification. We are also continuing to strive for more complex modifications we can add to the game to increase player engagement.
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