Development documentation:

(27/09/2021)

This marks the beginning of the module; we are currently a little confused and lost on what we are expected to develop. I have had some ideas already, however, the announcement of the limitations on the assessment criteria have left me rethinking some of the ideas. On the other hand, it gave me a clearer set of guidelines on what constitutes as “physical games”, physical games explicitly meaning board games, as the assignment expects both mechanics and a rule book.

After receiving the full assessment criteria, I started researching the subject and considering how I wanted to move forward with this assignment. Starting with the University blackboard, with Panopto videos to gather the understanding the assignment at large. The main website I used was YouTube to research effectively on different type of board games and how they are played.

My initial ideas list from

•             Domination and conquest

o             Area control, based on the phrase “power and control” I extended it to “power, control, domination and conquest”

•             The overly complicated board game

o             Exaggeration of how complex board games are, based on my experiences with playing board games this week

•             Draaag race

o             move your pawn by a card to reach A-B

•             Roll the 6 to get eliminated

o             Exactly what it says on the title. A large circle gets smaller each time someone rolls a 6 until only one remain

(4/10/2021)

Still stuck on this week, I played some more board games as well as viewing online videos on various board games to gather knowledge on what was required to be developed. I have 4 separate ideas on the physical games I would like to consider developing. That way, I can quickly prototype the game to see what works best with the criteria and works as a possible backup plan.

My initial ideas list from

1.            Domination and Conquest

a.            A unique spin of an area control game, simplified so that the rules are easy to understand

2.            The overly complicated board game

a.            The full title is “The overly-complicated board game so complex, you’ll give up in the middle of reading the rules”.

b.            It is a combination of all basic board game types (co-operative, Take that, Deck building, Engine building, legacy, abstract, asymmetrical, tile placement, area control, war game, living card games) to create a clustered mess. A parody of complicated boardgames.

3.            Draaag race

a.            Its basically snakes and ladders, but without the snakes and the ladders. You do not decide to move via the dice.

b.            You move is decided by a card, selected at random, but you choose which direction-ish.

c.             You crash into one of the fellow players= both you and the person you crash into gets eliminated.

4.            The fight arena

a.            2 players only. You roll dice to get a card (laid out). Show them off whoever gets the higher stats deals more damage. Your health is determined by the number of cubes you have.

(11/10/2021)

Throughout my experience of playing board games, I come across a common pattern. They were too complicated, and the rule books do not help either. This game is about conquering areas with only one pawn, with simple rules, simple mechanics and a simple goal: Domination and Conquest. It’s in the name, you dominate and conquer unsettled land (circles)

Inspiration

The game is heavily inspired by area control games, particularly Risk to a simplistic game practice. This is complemented by settlers of Catan with the hexagon grids within the board.

This week I had started on developing a prototype of the game as well as doing some research on other board games for ideas on how the game would work, but mainly to manoeuvre away from plagiarism, as the D&Q game may sound too familiar. My documentation research will argue that there is no other game exactly like it, on top of how the game would work and the summary of the project.

The game will play as an area control game, where players can only move one tile in any direction. This continues until the player gets all the tiles. However, if you step back into your own territory, it becomes blank and if players run out of territories, they are eliminated.

If the player steps on the question block, they must answer the question correctly or not get the territory.

(18/10/2021)

The bullet points highlighted in green means that the targets were met. I didn’t believe the board is ready to be stuck on card board as it was currently going through amendments.

This week I had made major updates, changing the layout to include freeze blocks which was introduce as another variable to the questions. I had also change the question mechanics to appear more mechanical as a board game, compared to the party-ish impression with the questions with games similar to Trivial Pursuit.

As a response to the mostly negative review of the game, amendments had been made so that more moves can be made and loosening the winning conditions.

The rulebook has been updated with drawn pictures.

(25/10/2021)

This week I had made some minor adjustments. I am ready to print the review.

I am unable to draft my other games, due to time constraints. The rule book has been updated to incorporate the new rules and drawings (images), along with the minimum requirement standard that has just been released on blackboard.

The picture below, illustrates a board overhaul to create more of a board texture, rather than just a sheet of A3 paper that I had previously. The curses and freeze blocks are evenly distributed throughout the board, like last time. However, I have made larger circles to indicate what blocks are underneath of the would be occupied territories, which were common criticisms in previous playtest sessions. The starter locations are also coloured in with a representative player colour to set the locations in stone.

(1/11/2021)

This week I have not done a lot of amendments, as there were not many to be made left anyway. The only major update I had made to version 1.2.1 is to remove the elimination card, as I finally decided it was too unfair and not many games are this harsh.

Unfortunately, I only got one playtester due to increased time constraint. As I briefly had to attend the online session to perfect my work in a run up to the formative assessment.

(8/11/2021)

This week targets

•             Start drafting the paper cut out version of my game

•             Be more linient with my freeze block (roll a 1, 3 or 5)

Design diary

This week I have chosen to miss the playtesting session, because I was busy amending the feedback sheet and creating a paper cut out draft, in a run up to the deadline.

However, I did amendments to the game, including relaxing the rules on landing on freeze block exemptions.

(15/11/2021)

This week I had made minor changes to the game and reflected those changes by changing the rule book ever so slightly. These were, becoming more lenient with the freeze blocks from having to roll a 1 to escape to rolling any odd number on the dice. This is accompanied by removing a rule that you could push other players back because no one was using it throughout the playtesting sessions despite reading the rulebook themselves.

Despite removing the elimination card from the game entirely, it still manages to hide itself in along with the other cards that are currently in use. In order to prevent this, I threw it in the bin. As of this week onwards, I will be vetting my cards to ensure that no unfair cards are lingering.

(22/11/2021)

This week I had stapled my rule book to replace the now obsolete method of sticking the pages together via Sellotape.

Now I plan to touch up on my print out game as the module is starting to come to an end and it is expected that the paper cut out game needs to look neat enough to appear to be bought from a shop.

No major changes were made since last week.

(29/11/2021)

This week I had only made minor adjustments based on the criticisms from last week. These include further incorporating the dice into the game to solidify the mechanic. This includes adding an escape to the curses for the first time in attempts to balance out the game.

I had also allowed players to jump over each other (not share the same tile) to escape a possible encirclement of other pawns, although at the expense of using 2 moves to jump over rather than the one move a tile.

(06/12/2021)

This week I will be focusing on showcasing my final game via a video. This, by default means that there would be no more play tests or tweaks beyond this point.

I started to redesign the board to incorporate continents or pseudo-continents to tailor the gameboard to appear more professional compared to a simple white background.

The print and play will also be redesigned to incorporate significant new changes over this week to sprint to the deadline. These include redesigning the rule book to feature picturesque background with consistent colour pattern, shrinking the images to appear appropriate size to not take too many pages as well as being large enough to be visible.

Even though A3 paper is only twice the size of A4 sheet, I had to separate the printable board into 4 sections to fit in perfectly as they appear too small and made even worse by margin limitations.

Playtest overview

Over the several weeks, I had players test my game in varying versions.

Initially, the game was rather boring and tedious.