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 :)