Game Design Blog

What went right

1. This game came together really well at the beginning and we had a lot of starting ideas.

2. As we developed the game, it became full of strategic qualities which made the game a lot more interesting.

3. The game pieces came together very nicely. It made our game way better.

4. Making the game about territorial acquisition made it really strategic and fun.

5. Overall, making the game and developing the pieces and board went really smoothly.

6. The look of defeat on alex’s face as he intensely analyzed his inevitable defeat was good.

What went wrong

1. There was a lot to keep track of in the game, but it was later solved with the new turn clock design.

2. We were having trouble gathering enough money at first to be able to do anything, which was also solved later on.

3. I carved all the pieces by hand starting with a block of wood which made my hands really tired and worn out.

4. There was a lack of communication at first between our group but it all came together in the end.

5. There wasn’t enough time to work on the project, but still we succeeded in making everything we needed.

Conclusion

The whole process of making the game was fun and i learned a lot with the whole game-making process. I learned that you need good communication to work in a group. 

“Today I Die” is a really creative and interesting game. The music was a big part of it. It gave the game a really good feel and made it more fun to play. The only thing I had a problem with was the shadow part on part #5. I couldn’t get past the shadows for the longest time. It took me ten tries just to get past that part. It was very frustrating. I didn’t know that you can use the bubbles as shields until after i tried it a bunch of times and finally succeeded. Over all, it was a really good game with a really good mechanic.

I haven’t played too many text games so I can’t really compare it to other games, but this game has a very interesting mechanic which really pulled me to find out if there was something more to the poem than what is visibly written. The whole mechanic of this game was really different from what I am used to and it is a very creative way of taking those words and turning it into actions. Being able to interact with the text instead of just reading it like your usual game gave it a more interactive feel.

“There are alot of confusing messages the game is relaying to the player by simply not contextualizing actions with feedback.”

“I think I mistakenly thought the next level was a “failure” screen.”

“So yes, it was bad game design. IMHO, all that was needed to make it good game design was for the failure conditions to create learning experiences so that with each failure you got a hint of what you should have done instead.”

Here are some quotes of criticism from other game designers. It seems like it was confusing to some players and that people were looking for a failure state which would create learning experiences as said on the third quote. I can see how it was confusing. It was confusing to me at first until I started moving the cursor around and started clicking on the words which enabled me to switch the words, thus bringing me to another part of the underwater world Daniel has created.

Corvus’ solution was: “Don’t read it like a game, play it like a poem.”

I agree to his statement because looking further into the game instead of working with what you have in front of you brings out more meaning to the game and it makes it a lot more fun and exciting. It doesn’t negate its status as a game, but instead it gives it more meaning as a game. Corvus states that this game is more like a poem in the sense of contemplating each meaning of each line as you would do with a poem.

If I made a similar game, it would take a lot of thought to make it. I wouldn’t just write random text down to interact with, I would write something meaningful that would go just right with whatever kind of game I am trying to create. If i ever did something like this, I could see myself over-thinking the whole poem part and how that would go with my game. I tend to over-think things and put in too much effort into something when I could create something more basic and have the same effect. 

What Went Right:

1. The initial start of coming up with ideas for Caffeinated, and developing our game came together very well. We had a lot of ideas right at the beginning, and having a fighting genre made it really easy to come up with simple rules and game play.

2. Each test play brought forth better ideas and better mechanics of the game.

3. We had a good over all structure right at the beginning of developing the game which made our game very well structured the more we played it.

4. Having the bomb card really added a certain impact to the game which made it really interesting.

5. The finished product of the game was well balanced and fun to play.

What Went Wrong:

1. We had a lot of issues concerning the reverse card. We tried 3 different ways of using it but it still didn’t work out until the end, when Alex had suggestion about what we should do.

2. The hierarchy of the cards wasn’t very clear at first which made it confusing to a lot of testers.

3. Our game was better with 2 players. When we brought out 4 players into the mix, there were a lot of complications that we didn’t even think about until it happened.

4. We also had problems with our stalemate situation. That’s where the hierarchy of the cards came in. Players didn’t know who would win depending on what kind of special cards they had on the table.

Conclusion:

Our game was really fun to play and to create and I learned a lot about the development of games.

The uno mod that we are developing at the moment is definitely a “Survival” and “Destruction” core type. It is a fighting game so it is all about defeating your opponent and being the last one standing. The objective is mainly to take down your opponents by having the highest number card or using special cards and when your opponent runs out of cards they lose. I also think that the bomb card gives our game more of a destructive feel. Its a simple yet effective way to gain advantage but it can also affect you in a negative way, which makes the game more interesting. Our game is also like “Prediction” in a way, because when you’re laying down cards you’re just hoping the person has a lower card or that they don’t have a special card. The way you lay down cards at the same time makes it a bit like rock paper scissors cause your laying down the cards at the same time and your trying to predict what the person is gonna do next.

I think that our game is least like the “Trading” game core type. In our game you can’t trade and and there is no cooperative play. You need to cooperate with people to trade and theres no cooperative play in our game.

It would be interesting if we incorporated cooperative play into our game and possibly set aside a deck to where you can trade a card you have for another card with the same amount or close to the same amount of value. Or instead of trading from a separate deck you can trade with your partner to make each other’s hands even deadlier and gain a better advantage against your opponents.

Changing those two rules would make the game more strategic and it can open up all kinds of possibilities. If for example I had a reverse card I can trade that with a +4 or +2 card and keep a chain going for people to keep laying down their cards then win it all by laying down a high card.

My favorite is “Destruction” and “Survival.” I think that it’s a fun and exciting type of gaming genre. “Survival” combined with “Destruction” is an awesome combination which makes things unpredictable and gives it a certain feel of suspense. I’ve played a lot of first person shooter games and these are a perfect example of what you can do by combining those two game core types. Being hunted and hunting someone down is a really intense feeling and it kind of gives you a rush. Even though it’s just a game, the intensity of “Survival” and “Destruction” makes a game ever more appealing and it can pull people in to play these types of games.

All of the definitions that Schrieber lists are in-line in how I think about games. Each definition makes you think about the “definition of a game” in different ways, but all of them have the same basic concept. They are all similar in a way.  

The only definition that I have somewhat of an issue with is Greg Costikyan’s definition of a game. His definition states that games are a “form of art which the participants, termed Players, make decisions in order to manage resources through game tokens in the pursuit of a goal.” The first part of it which states that games are a “form of art,” is the only part I kind of have an issue with. Games are made with art but not all games are a form of art. For example, I wouldn’t call basketball or baseball a form of art. To some people, they might find the action and the way the players play the game, and the physical aspect to be a form of art, but those are just opinions of some people and it doesn’t apply to everyone. 

All the definitions basically talk about the same things. Each definition talks about having players to interact with the game, rules, conflict within the game, goals, and decision making. I think that all these points in a game that I listed are a fairly universal characteristics of what people think games are. There are many different games in the world and they are all different from each other but each of these games have these same characteristics.

I think that Stories isn’t a game, because games are something you interact with. Stories might have some of the game characteristics that I listed above, but I think that games are something you interact with and something you build yourself up to accomplish a goal. Stories are a big part of gaming design but if you take the story out of the game and just read it or watched it, your not really interacting with it.