Week 4 – Battleship re-designing, more Game Design Discussions, and more Board Games….

This week was nearly as intense as the previous week, as we were told to create 2 more board games, with even more restrictions this time. The catch was that both board games didn’t need to be fully polished, which was a relief for most of us. The lecture was pretty much re-designing the board game Battleship and more discussions about game design, such as the aspect of spawning in a game and spawn-camping, which players take advantage of. 

            For the first board game of the week, we were told to create a board game involving the collection dynamic. This was a bit different from last week’s board games, and my group and I decided to go with a totally new game, instead of re-using one of our old board games. To start off the game, players roll one dice each turn, and move according to their roll, and if they land on one of the 12 specified tiles, they must draw a card from the draw pile. 

              The winner of this game is declared when a player has 3 cards with the same symbol, regardless of colour. Players can also trade in 3 cards of the same colour when they land on the middle tile (also known as the trade tile), and receive a wildcard, which counts as any symbol. This game seemed to perform very well and proved to be fun, although it may be based on luck too much at times. I found the use of a trade system to be very intriguing, as you can use it to get rid of any useless cards in your hand.

          

             Our second board game of the week is very interesting, as we were told to create a World War 2 themed game, which could not involve death, territorial control, or capture/destroy objectives. This made our choices of objectives very thin, and my group and I decided to go for a board game that involved resources, which was required for each player to make their move. We ended up creating a very fun game that involves a lot of strategy to play. To start off this game, players roll one dice, and they are able to move that many spaces that turn, at the cost of that many resources +1. If the player did not have enough resources to move that many space that turn, they can re-roll the dice and gain that many resources; however, they will not be able to move for that turn. The goal of this game is for players to get to Berlin before their opponents can reach it. 

            There are 3 different spaces for players to land on, strategy zones, trap zones, and Nazi zones (if controversial, will be changed to German zones). When players land on a strategy zone, they will be able to draw a card from the strategy deck, which involves cards that allow you to advance further, or to set back your opponents. When players land on a trap zone, they are able to draw a card from the trap deck, which involves setting back the player who drew that card (this can be seen as the Nazis impeding your progress to Berlin). The final zone that players may land on are Nazi zones, which causes players to lose extra resources when they land on that zone. This game proved to be very fun as well, and can be very suspenseful at times, since you don’t know what cards you might draw or what space you will land on. The use of resources was especially interesting, as it forces players to think strategically before attempting do anything without and thinking beforehand. 

That’s all for this week, stay tuned for more :)

Week 3 – Making Board games, Redesigning Tic-Tac-Toe, and more Game Design :)

           The past week was relatively busy for me, as well as for my group, as we had to work on two board games at once, and get them ready by the next tutorial to be presented to Kei. It took nearly a full day of work last Thursday in order to finish and polish up our first board game, which was the race-to-the-end-based game, as well as to finish up our second board game, which was the territorial-based game. We also had to redesign tic-tac-toe in class, which I found to be very interesting, especially what some people come up with. As usual, we also discussed game design, and different aspects of game design, which were related to the tic-tac-toe game.

Our first board game that my group and I had created was pretty much a capture-the-flag based game, called Flag Assault, where players control 10 pieces placed in their starting zone with 2 flags in the back of their base. The whole goal of the game is to move as quickly as you can to your opponent’s base (who will always be in the opposite corner from your base), snatch their flag, and to bring it back to your own flag spawn point in order to win the game. the game was fairly fun to play, as you can come up with many strategies in order to win.

Our second game is a bit different, where players start with one tile each at opposite corners on the board. Players can either move one step in any direction, or to duplicate their piece onto an adjacent hexagon. The goal of this game is to conquer more territory than your opponent, as the winner is decided by either the player with the most tiles of their colour on the board, or the player that manages to conquer every territory on the board.

Week2 - Tic-Tac-Toe, Magic Square, and Game Design!

Well, another week has passed, and this week was similar to last week, where we were told to play a numbers game (which is supposedly tic-tac-toe in disguise). It was a bit different, however, because we only played the numbers game for a short period of time, while most of the class was spent discussing elements of game design, and what components make up games. 

We also had to brainstorm different elements that tie to games, such as fantasy, goals, artificial, decision making, etc. It was interesting listening to what other people thought of games, and components of games. Although I had wanted to join the discussion and add some thoughts of my own to the class discussion, my friends and I had sat too far back to be chosen to speak. Next time I shall try to sit in a better spot in the front in order to have a better chance to be chosen to speak :)

Finally, we were all told to work together in groups in order to design and create a game that involves the category ‘race to the end’, where players have to compete to see who gets to the goal first, and bonus marks were awarded to games that involved conflict. We also had to design and create another game that involves the territorial category, which is heavily used in the board game ‘Risk’. Well, that’s all for this week, hopefully my group and I can finish our games within the week…

Week 1 - New Semster and Zombies!

Kicking it off for the winter semester, I have recently played the card game 'Zombie Fluxx' during my game design and production lecture, with 5 other players. We played the game for roughly an hour, and had a lot of fun. It was a slow start, but we managed to learn the game and distinguish between the different cards that were included in the box.

                After playing one round of the card game, I had come to like the fact that this game manages to build up a lot of suspense, as well as provide a lot of fun for all the players. It was a very diverse game, where the cards included keepers (which were necessary to complete goals), zombies, actions, rules, and goals. Both the rules and the goals of the game can change very quickly, as players can turn the tide of the game with a single turn.

                One of the few things that I did not like with this game was the fact that the game gets dragged on too long sometimes, especially with the rules and goals changing all the time. Also, much luck is needed in order for players to get the right cards, as the game’s basic rules did not allow us to draw and play enough cards at the beginning, without altering the rules. The game was also a bit confusing to learn to play at the beginning, but once we got the hang of it, it was pretty fun after all!

That's all for now, stay tuned for more...

~ Edward Kwok (100368569)