This past week has been pretty good
for me, as we finally got divided into studios for our game development
workshop. This was especially good news for me, as I was anxiously waiting to
see if I’ll get grouped up with my friends, which is exactly what happened. We
will strive to create an even better game this year! This week’s two lectures
were also interesting since we got to design and play a ball game with the
class divided into two groups, while in the other lecture we got to play with a
very interesting card game.
The
ball game that my group chose to design was none other than “human” Foosball,
which is very similar to the tabletop game except it is played with lots of people. We were not allowed to change the goal
of the game, and the goal was to get the ball into a box that was placed on top
of the table. The rules we came up with were pretty simple, players will stand
in rows of 4 players, with the back two rows facing forward and the front row
facing backwards (please see the diagram below):
The black rectangles represent the
tables in the classroom, and the blue and red dots represent the players, and
their respective positions. The arrows represent the direction that each player
should be facing, and the white box in the middle represents the goal.
Players can only
use their hands to hit or touch the ball, and cannot grab the ball at all. Should
the ball get stuck on a chair or touch the floor, the ball is “served” to the
opposing team. At first the game was pretty chaotic as players were randomly
hitting the ball in random directions, with some players even trying to hit
each other with the ball. It was also hard to get to ball into the box to win,
especially if players did not cooperate as a team, and especially if the enemy
was adamant on blocking the way to the goal. I’ll admit this game reminds me a
lot of volleyball mixed in with Foosball, but in the end it turned out to be
very interesting and fun to play.
The
game the other group had come up with was similar to basketball, where players
hold the ball, pass it to other teammates, and can only take a maximum of 3
steps before having to pass it on. All players stood on top of the tables, and
can hold the ball as long as they want, but still must adhere to the rules.
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| Goal cards |
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| Plastic chips |
During
the second lecture, we split up into smaller groups this time and played a game
that involved several goal cards and plastic poker chips. The rules of the game
were fairly simple, where players put a randomly picked chip (the “shooter”
chip) on the edge of the table, and must tap it to hit other players’ chips. If
you hit another chip on the table you get to keep it if it doesn’t fall off the
table, otherwise it goes back into the bag. The meta-goal of the game was to
complete as many goal cards as possible, and the rules that we used was for
every player to pick a goal card and to complete that goal before anyone else
can complete theirs. This game was pretty fun for us to play with, although it
did have some issues. The biggest issue was the fact that the plastic chips
provided were too light, and a lot of the time when a player taps their chip,
it would jump over other chips and not hit them at all. In the end, we decided
to change up some of the goals by adding our own custom goals, such as jumping
over other chips or hitting 3 chips at once.
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| Custom rules and goals |
We also added our own custom
rules, such as if players jump over another chip, they can take it and receive
double the amount of points, or if you hit another player’s chip you can
actually take points from their total score.
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| Scoreboard after the first game |
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| Final scoreboard, with a winner |
Overall I found
this week’s lecture and activities to be fairly fun, and I hope that lectures
in the future will be as enjoyable as the past week has been. Stay tuned for
more blog posts next week!
