1. Postmortem

    stevensteelsojka:

    Steven’s Postmortem

    Before we started making our games, I had no idea how in depth we would get with these games.  I also didn’t realize how hard it would be to develop these games.  It was a a lot harder than I had thought.  I think this was a totally awesome learning experience.  It really showed me the importance of play testing also. 

    First off.  I think this project is better handled with a team of people.  Actually I think most creative processes are better handled in groups or with group feedback.  I know I didn’t get to have a partner for certain reasons, but group feedback was really helpful.  I had already started something and would have hated to abandon that idea.

    I really like the idea of mixing up the board games and using the pieces that you had.  This really helped to not over think.  If I was to come up with a game I would try to include so much stuff.  Limiting to pieces that you have and then building upon that is the best way to go about it.

    For my games I wanted something that was kind of an adventure game.  I had dinosaurs from the start and those were the pieces I had most of.  I thought it might be a cool idea to control two different pieces that could do 2 different things.  This added an element of strategy to the game.  The biggest crutch in the beginning was the board.  I had a part of a checker board and then some pieces that didn’t really go with what I was trying to accomplish.  People had to move across a linear board before anything interesting could happen.  This made the beginning of the game incredibly slow.  So the first couple play tests were good but I couldn’t the larger board that I had hoped.  At first my game was incredibly hard to even get past the first part.  Original the game made sense before it was played, but testing it was a HUGE help in determining these flaws in the rules.

    I loved the idea of being able to screw other players or to create alliances with them.  The rules of the game were really hard to refine since there were so many situations that I had to think about.  My rules list started getting bigger and more confusing.  The final result of my game is difficult to explain, but once you get the game down is pretty easier to get.  It takes about one time through the game and you’re set.

    I had to start thinking about what type of board I wanted to do.  A checker board was what I had original come up with, but turned out to be boring.  Alex suggested a hex board which was a great idea.  The game was more interesting and made it more fun.  I had to rewrite the rules which was starting to develop.  I was alittle behind with rules on my game as opposed to everyone else.  Everyone’s rules were pretty solid and mine were still changing  pretty drastically.  The board to my game was pretty vital.  It either made or broke the game. 

    I wish I would have had some more time to play test the final version of my game because I didn’t get a chance to try it the tillable board.  I was just praying that it would work and that there wouldn’t be any holes in the rules.   After playing a couple times I have found some rules that I would like to change.

    I think the artwork turned out really well for the game.  The cards were great.  They are a little fragile.  Obviously I can’t have get real cards made since it would cost quite a bit more.  I have enough expensive in my painting class.  When we started talking about the tillable board after a play testing I knew exactly what I wanted to do and how to make it.  I took some mat board and cut it into 70 - 3 1/4” x 3 1/4” squares.  The all didn’t turn out perfectly square like I would have hoped, but they were close enough since I was using a mat board cutter.  The designs for the board were simple outdoor images that I live traced in Adobe Illustrator.  Then I printed them onto shipping labels and stuck them on each piece and trimmed away the excess.  This took a little over 2 hours, which was a pain in the ass!

    All in all this was a great experience.  I learned a lot more from it than I though I would.  I’ve never had to break a game down to its most basic components and think about in the design process.  I think it will help in the future with designing anything another person might interact with.  This is something I would defiantly recommend for someone else.

    From this whole experience I realized that I just don’t like games with answering trivia as the main way to progress. This also applies to my game. I think that’s why I was instantly drawn to your game, as well as the games we played in class like Munchkin and Settler’s of Catan. Your game felt similar to Catan, but was different enough to make it feel fresh. The strategy was the winning aspect of the game. Figuring out how to spend your energy was a brilliant solution, and a method I’ve only really witnessed in RPG video games. But it has proved interesting a successful implementation in this scenario.

    The length of the game was very well balanced and it seemed to keep us interested til the end.

    2 years ago  /  Notes