Postmortem

ewilde:

When Brad and I were first handed that Donald Trump box full of bits of other board games, I was quite overwhelmed. There were way too many components, and we weren’t sure how to make them all work together.  We had three parts of two different boards, trivia questions, dino pieces, pieces from mouse trap, Trump dollars… I immediately wanted to simplify our supplies.  Somehow we got a loose idea of how gameplay would happen right before the first playtest, even though we didn’t really have many rules or solid plans.

Our team of two had some decent skills to bring to the table.  Although I hadn’t played more boardgames than the average person, Brad had played many and knew about all kinds of different styles of game play.  He also has an extensive background in digital art, as that is kind of his “thing,” and he came up with the template for the board pieces as well as a great alternative to the house of cards — the stacking DNA strand.  Brad is a good problem solver.  My background is all over the place, though mostly I am into package design and more “tangible” forms of art. I was very willing to play any and all board games just to get ideas and of course, for fun. I am also somewhat of a science lover so from there I got a lot of my visual design ideas.

One thing that went better than I expected was solidifying the theme of evolution and Earth history.  Granted we had dinosaur pieces to begin with, the theme came together really well and it was easy to add theme-based components. I’m glad Brad insisted we had the card-stacking in the initial play testings because it added a much-needed level of complexity to our game, and evolved (ha ha) into the DNA strand and emphasized the fragility of life. I also really enjoyed the play testing process. It was great to have input from someone else because I lose perspective very easily if I am involved at all with a project.  Everyone’s suggestions or problems with the game really helped us see the problems that arise in different situations, as well as what needed to be adjusted to make game play move smoothly.

Something I didn’t anticipate was the amount of time it really took to develop a game.  I didn’t think by the end of the project I’d want more time, but now I’d love to fix just a few more things on our game.  Our trivia cards definitely need to be looked through again and separated into easy, medium, and hard questions. I’d love to find a way to make the trivia answerable by people of most ages and who are not currently in a science class. It can be a turn-off if you aren’t into science and you get a lot of the questions wrong. The cards themselves could also benefit greatly from a professional printing.

I’d also like to make our board pieces reinforced by some kind of cardboard or thick matboard, like Steve’s were in Dino Escape. I think it’d make the game feel more professional that way.  A lot of our design aspects could be a little more polished. Another thing that I’d like to change would be the sabotage aspect.  It needs more sabotage for sure, as I think players feel like they have no control over who wins or loses.  Finally, something that is just always problematic with group projects is finding the time to meet with each other. We basically communicated through emails and in class which worked out okay for us.

All in all, I still am shocked that we came up with this game out of that Donald Trump game box. I liked the way Brad and I were able to bounce ideas off each other, and his initial game board pieces really got things rolling design-wise.  It was sometimes a little rough trying to make a playable and enjoyable game, but the experience was fun and eye-opening.  I feel like I can enjoy board games on another level now, and also be critical of games I might have once thought were great. I want to do it again with different parts of other games now. I bet the second time through would be a little easier, as I’d probably have a better idea of what I was doing. This is not at all what I expected to be doing in this class, but it was a great way to start thinking about game play and all the things that effect a game.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like the Gods wanted me to play your group’s game. I only managed to play it at the iteration before the last. I have to say that I actually enjoyed it. I enjoy the competitive spirit, even though I didn’t know many of the questions. I really enjoyed the stacking of the DNA, as a way to sabotage opponents. It all felt very Jurassic Park to me. In the sense that over-working DNA could have disastrous results. And you could have called the game Purassic Jark to avoid copyright issues.

I liked your gameboard design. However i feel like the circle spots did end up being a bit arbitrary. Although I really liked the idea. I wish there was a way to make the placement of the tiles more significant than just the order of colors. All-in-all I wish I was able to meet you guys at Brad’s when you guys played your final version. I’m sure it was great!

2 years ago  /  4 notes