Run Very Fast Sam Blake Gabe Grow February 27, 2017 GIMM 290 Game Design Theory Dr. Ted Apel ABSTRACT The purpose of this project is to iterate a game design that focuses on social interaction as a core mechanic. MATERIALS 1. Challenge cards 2. Printer paper 3. Drawing supplies RULES 1. The game is played with one moderator and three players. It costs three tokens to play. The players have twenty minutes to complete as many tasks as they can. For each task they complete, they will receive a piece of candy. To begin, the moderator draws one card and reads it to the group, who must then complete the described task. 2. When the first task is finished, the moderator draws another card, and so forth until the time is up. 3. When the players complete three challenges, it doubles their candy, and each challenge completed thereafter will add two additional candies.
IMAGES Challenge cards. DESIGN PROCESS STATEMENT We felt that to make a game that would earn the most tokens, we should make other people wonder what the game was about and think it looks fun when they see other people playing it. We thought of several different ways of doing it, from bringing in a huge refrigerator box to staging elaborate performances. After a lot of discussion, we could combine some of the ideas we'd already come up with into one game. That was how we settled on having multiple challenges. Though some of our process was theoretical, we did run through a few of the challenges ourselves to make sure they were possible to complete in five or six minutes. We had an idea for a challenge to fold a paper crane, but that was thrown out because Gabe couldn't fold a paper crane nearly quick enough. Ultimately, we left in some challenges that are possible to complete in five minutes, but very difficult, because we wanted the game to be very challenging. We also ran through several different ideas for how many tokens to charge and how to distribute the candy. Because the game is so hard, we wanted people to receive a reward for playing, even if they didn't meet the win condition of three challenges completed. Our solution to this was to award candy after every completed challenge. We also went back and forth on whether to ask for three or four tokens, but settled on three. 1
After the in-class tournament, we decided to modify our game and allow players to choose the round length. Each token buys five minutes of play time, and if players choose to buy fifteen minutes, they get an extra five. 2
Candyland Modified Sam Blake Gabe Grow January 23rd, 2017 GIMM 290 Game Design Theory Dr. Ted Apel ABSTRACT This project has taken all group members through a series of failure-by-failure processes to create a game that adds meaningful play to the classic children s board game Candyland. We have added an additional system of choice through adding new options for playing card use. RULES 1. Set up the board. To set up the Candy Land board, unfold it and place it on your playing surface. Make sure that you place the board somewhere that everyone can reach it. A large table or a carpeted floor make good playing surfaces. 2. Shuffle the cards and stack them together in a pile. Make sure that all of the cards are facing down so no player can see what they will pick up off the top of the deck. Place the cards somewhere central so that all players will be able to reach them. 3. Place gingerbread pawns on the start square. The game comes with four gingerbread character pawns. Each player should choose one of these gingerbread pawns and place it on the start square of the Candyland board. 4. Let the youngest player go first. Have all of the players announce their birthdays to determine who is the youngest player. That player gets to go first and then play passes to the left. Keep the turns moving in a clockwise fashion throughout the entire game.
5. Draw a card. If this card has one or two colored squares, you may choose to move your own game piece forward towards the respected square color on the board or use the card s predetermined power. Some cards have pink squares with candy on them. These cards have specific use conditions. Move on to the Powers section for more information. 6. Take shortcuts when possible. There are two shortcuts on the board that will allow you to move ahead faster if you land on one of these special spaces. The two shortcuts are located on Rainbow Trail and Gumdrop Pass. The shortcut space on Rainbow Trail is orange and the one on Gumdrop Pass is yellow. If you land on one of these spaces, follow the shortcut path upwards to the space above it. You must land on the exact space to use a shortcut. You may not use a shortcut if you are just passing by it. 7. Lose a turn if you land on a licorice space. There are three licorice spaces on the board. If you land on one of these spaces, then you lose a turn. Keep in mind that you do not lose a turn if you are just passing by a licorice space. You must land on the exact space to lose a turn. 8. Continue until you reach the end. The first player who reaches the multi-colored rainbow space at the end of the board has made it to the candy castle. The player who makes it to the candy castle first wins the game! POWERS Pink: Pink cards can be used to move the player or their opponent to the space depicted. These cards can be used immediately, or they can be kept for later use. If reserved, the card can be used at any time during anyone s turn. Only one pink card can be held at a time. If you receive a colored square in the card draw, you may use the card s respected power. There is no difference in power if the card has one or two colored squares. Red: You may draw an extra card during your next turn. Blue: You may choose to discard this card and draw another card from the top of the deck. Orange: The next card you play has double movement power. EX: Use this power, if you draw a single red square, you may move forward two red square spaces. Use this 1
power, if you draw a double red square, you may move forward four red Square spaces. This does not apply to pink cards. Green: You may choose to switch the locations of your piece and a single opponent s on the game board. Purple: Draw cards during your next turn that amount to the number of players in the game plus one. EX: 4 players = 5 card draw. You get to decide which card each player will play on their next turn, including yourself. Discard the extra card. Players are required to use the cards given on their next turn, and cannot use another purple effect until the following round. Yellow: You may revert a single player s action from the previous turn. EX: if player 1 moves forward two red spaces and ends their turn, and then player 2 draws a yellow card, player 2 can use the yellow card to move player 1 back two red spaces. This card can be employed to cancel use of pink candy cards. When this ability is used on a pink card, the opponent keeps the card, but cannot use it for the duration of that turn. MATERIALS 1. Game piece for each player to signify location on board. 2. Candyland board 3. Set of colored square cards to indicate movement. 4. Set of 7 specific pink candy cards. 5. Game rules (optional) IMAGES 2
The game board The cards 3
The player s game pieces. The full game 4
DESIGN PROCESS STATEMENT While playing through Candyland for the first time, we both realized that it s entirely a game of chance. The winner of each game is predetermined from the moment you shuffle the deck. Not only is there no meaningful choice--there s no choice at all. This was the main issue that we set out to address. We spent several hours throwing around ideas and playtesting various iterations of our new design. We ll describe some of the more notable ones here. Our very first iteration included the ability to hold on to cards after you played them to move your character forwards. We wanted to create an inventory system. We felt one of the ways to address the random element in the game was to give the colored cards some other purpose. This idea on its own is not enough to modify the outcome of the game, but it s something that ended up playing into our final result. We also considered including RPG elements. We briefly considered adding additional content to the game by writing power-ups, story, or misfortunes on the back of each playing card. We discussed having each pink card set a preset number. You must draw cards that have specific numbers. Red = 1, Blue = 2, etc. You get to move on to the next boss if your cards are higher than the boss s.ultimately this idea was scrapped because it would have been impractical in scope to balance a game that was extremely complicated. We thought another good way to implement choice in the game was to copy Poker s mechanics. In this game each player draws 3 cards per round. Each card has a preset value. Red = 1, Blue = 2, etc. Each player moves forward at most 5 spaces at the choice of the player. Once all players have chosen a location to move, all cards are shown. The highest scoring player is allowed to move to their respected location. All players must move backwards the same amount of spaces that they desires to move forward. You may fold and not show your hand, nor move if you feel as though your score is not high enough to beat any other players. This concept gave the player the ability to choose their play, but we decided that this game was still too random and gave no true choice or strategy for the players. We ran into a lot of issues with introducing choice into this game. Briefly we considered a completely different direction--bringing the game out of the game board and into the real world. We thought of incorporating elements from party games like 5
werewolf, sardines, and fugitive. In this scenario the board and the pieces would come to represent progress in the game. The color card draw would indirectly facilitate movement of the pieces through some external competition. We didn t stick with this direction largely because we had difficulty coming up with an external competition that contained strategy and meaningful choice. Our final iteration had some issues when we first conceived it. Originally, players could use the color cards to move their opponent backwards as well, and pink cards could be held for the duration of the game. Our first playthrough lasted 45 minutes, and would have lasted longer if we hadn t wrapped it up early. We then set a limit on the number of pink cards a player could hold. Even in this version, the game was long and difficult to win. Finally we realized the issue was the backward momentum of sending opponents backwards. In our final version of the game, opponents can only be sent backwards with pink cards. This balanced the game. 6
Figuris Connectens Sam Blake Gabe Grow February 6, 2017 GIMM 290 Game Design Theory Dr. Ted Apel ABSTRACT The purpose of this project is to iterate a game design to create meaningful play and learn about randomness and skill balance in game creation. The game was made using only a pack of index cards and a pen. MATERIALS 1. A stack of triangle, circle, and square resource cards, labeled separately for each player. 2. A collective stack of producer cards. 3. A collective stack of base cards, with two shapes on either side. 4. A clear, empty table. RULES 1. As setup, draw one card from the base cards pile. Put this in the center of the table. 2. At the beginning of each turn, each player draws one card from the "producer" card pile. The first producer can be laid on the table immediately. Each producer card has four small shapes on each corner. On following turns, producers must be laid adjacent to the initial producer, and can only be laid if the shapes match on one of the four sides. For example, if a producer card has
only triangles on its corners, only producer cards with triangles on two adjacent corners (left and right, or top and bottom) can be laid next to it. Producer cards can be moved and adjusted throughout the game so that cards can be laid. Producer cards that cannot be laid are kept by the player until they are usable. 3. Each producer card has one large shape in the center. This is the shape the card produces. After the producer cards are laid, each player draws one corresponding shape resource card for each producer on the table. 4. These shapes are then played into the center of the table. Cards can be played anywhere on the table as long as they're touching an existing card. Players earn points by laying cards of the same shape adjacent to one another. It is not possible to have a group of more than five shapes (center, top, bottom, left, right). Each shape can only be counted once and all shapes must be directly adjacent to one central card. Points earned are as follows: a. 2 shapes: 1 point b. 3 shapes: 2 points c. 4 shapes: 3 points d. 5 shapes: 4 points 5. At the end of the turn, another base card is drawn from the pile. Players take turns placing this card: if player 1 places the card at the end of the first turn, player B places it the second turn. 6. The game ends when there are no more cards or when there is no more space on the table. Cards can never be picked up to make room for other cards (i.e. to lay another producer card if gameplay reaches edges of the table). Shapes can only be counted once, and a player can only score with their own shapes. Both players can score with base cards. IMAGES 1
Producer cards Base cards Resource cards 2
All game pieces DESIGN PROCESS STATEMENT When we first began addressing this assignment, we had two ideas that we were running with--the idea of matching shapes on card edges to place cards, and the idea of collecting points based on adjacent cards. At first, these two concepts were separate games, each with an equal chance of ultimately being chosen. We realized halfway into our brainstorming phase that these two concepts could be combined into one game that is ultimately about the acquisition of physical space. From there, it became a question of how score should be calculated. We were split on whether it would be more effective to only count cards adjacent to one central shape, or to count adjacent cards indefinitely (i.e. in one straight line all the way across the table). It took some iteration to determine which method of scoring was most effective. At length, we settled on the central card method that appears in our final game rules--we decided that though it is more complicated to explain, it affects strategy in the game in a beneficial way when executed properly. Additionally, we had to determine how many kinds of producers and shapes there should be. Our initial playtesting was done with two shapes--triangles and circles. Later in the process, we began to experiment with different shapes. We decided that gameplay was more interesting and fun when we added squares. We also chose to have a base card drawn every turn at about this time, as it allows players to break up large groups of the same shape and forces variety. 3