Blog Post 3: Prototyping (Updated)
(Edited 2/19/2022)
Today, we made a prototype for a game using game mechanics found on GBK (GameBoardGeek). See the instructions and information below. Please note that this is a prototype and that nothing is final.
- Description:
In this game (name WIP), players are infected with a virus and must draw an Antidote card (Ace) from the deck. Use cards to try and reach (or steal) the antidote and fight for survival! The player who holds the antidote card by the time all of the cards are dealt from the deck wins!
Paper Prototype:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_GLPOhXZrTa8PTCng3pg8NV9YBE3ZUeFctd4O5qSYrw/edit?usp=sharing
- Play Logs:
Play log 1 (w/ Calvin Ngyuen on 2/12/2022):
Calvin goes first.
So far a few turns into the game, Calvin is taking the lead by making me draw too many cards.
The game is really boring because nothing exciting is going on other than drawing cards normally.
I drew the bomb. So I lose!
The game only lasted about three minutes and was REALLY boring because we were just drawing cards normally. Maybe we can make a defuse card or something of the sort? But I don't want to make it too close to Exploding Kittens.
We decided to include defuse card(s), add more mechanics (pairs, etc) to the game since the first playthrough was really boring.
Play log 2 (w/ Yousef on 2/18/2022):
The game starts off with me so I can demonstrate how a turn is conducted in this game.
I land on a red square, which makes me skip my draw.
Yousef starts his first turn and lands on an orange, but he has no pairs to play so he gets to draw 1 card.
I keep landing on red squares, which isn’t allowing me to draw very many cards.
Yousef lands on an orange square and combos it with playing pairs of 7's! He draws two cards and is allowed to take one of his sevens back!
I keep drawing into red squares and only drawing one card, so it seems I am just very unlucky
Yousef lands on a yellow square and combos it this time with two eights! he draws three cards!
Due to time constraints, we both agreed to end the game early for feedback in the remaining time we had.
We both agreed that Yousef won the game since he played and had more cards in his possession than I did.
No one successfully drew the antidote.
Play log three (w/ my nephew Dominic 2/19/2022):
This time I am playing with my nephew, who is a child. If I could get him to like this game, then it's a good sign. The challenge will be even more interesting since he can get bored pretty easily if he starts losing. His name is Dominic, but I will be referring him to Dom in this session.
I decided that Dom will go first since he is younger than I am.
He lands on a green square, which means that he draws one card
I land on a red square which makes me skip my draw
He lands on an orange square. However, since it’s too early in the game he couldn't didn’t have a pair to discard.
I drew the antidote card!
The game progresses slowly with neither him nor I having any pairs to play.
He lands on an orange and plays a three of a kind! He steals the antidote from me and is very happy.
We only have four cards left and one of the cards I drew is a Queen, which means I have four pairs of Queens.
I land on an Orange square with one card left in the deck and play four Queens to take the antidote and draw the last card.
I win!
Differences between sessions:
The first game session was very boring and sketchy. This was the first time playing it so I knew that it would be boring. The reason why it was so boring was it was just drawing a bunch of cards until someone was the winner. There was really no fun factor that made this game enjoyable. The changes that I made for the second play session would be adding in more mechanics for landing on squares and discarding cards. Compared to my second play session with Yousef, it was much more fun having more mechanics implemented as it added more intensity, variety, and randomness to the game. However, there were downsides to the second play session. The big issue was that I took out the bombs in the game that we were in the first play session and never changed the rules of drawing cards. So when a player would originally be supposed to be making their opponents draw cards (to potentially draw the bomb cards), they would instead be closer to drawing the antidote (since no bomb cards exist in the deck). Because of this, I changed the rules for my third play session with my nephew. The third play session compared to the second was a small but very impactful improvement. Instead of making your opponents draw cards with no bombs in the deck, there were drawing cards for themselves instead of other people. This made it so that there is one card to reach for and whoever reaches it is the winner! The objective became more clear and concise with each play session thus far. Despite this, the drawbacks were balancing issues, the gameboard design, and remembering the rules. The thing that isn’t as clear is how clear the rules are. Why are orange and yellow squares so similar? Why is dropping four pairs of face cards not as strong as playing three of a kind? These kinds of things ran through my head while playtesting in the second and third sessions. The gameboard was a random template I found on the internet, so there needs to be more and less of one color on the board (ex. less blue and red squares). Landing on an orange or yellow square should be rare and rewarding. Lastly, the rules were so detailed that even I had to refer back to my rules every now and then. There should be simpler options or a rules card or something.
3. Core Mechanic:
The core mechanic from BGG was “Hot Potato”. The Hot Potato mechanic is where a game piece (usually cards) is an item that a player does not want to own. This is because the game piece hurt the player's chances of winning the game. The most popular version of the game is Exploding Kittens. In Exploding Kittens, the objective of the game is for players to try not to draw the bomb card that is inside a deck of cards. Players can draw into cards to make other players draw the bomb, or to put the bomb on top of the deck, etc. The part of the game that I enjoyed was how intense the game can get when the only card(s) left TO draw are only bomb cards. It's even more fun to play when the expansion pack is included which includes a modified bomb card that adds even more intensity. I tried very hard to dwell away from any similarities to this game. However, I used this as a source of inspiration (it's my favorite board/card game!). I chose Hot Potato as my core mechanic because of how fun I think the mechanic can be in games. So in a way, my mechanic is like the “reverse” version of Hot Potato since players are fighting to KEEP the “potato” instead of making other players have it.
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamemechanic/3000/hot-potato
