This is the second post where I have been exploring the 2 different output options for my project. This post is investigating and developing the board game output. The photo below is the rough draft of what the board game layout design may look like. This will be the board layout that I use for the testing session, and the image below is shown of it drawn up on some cardboard.
I had intended to have the testing of the board game completed by Sunday. However, as it was Easter Sunday, my roommates went home to see their families. I was also not able to go home to Roscommon for Easter and so could not test out the game as I was in my apartment alone.
On Monday evening however my roommates returned and we tested out the rough draft I had created. Upon start of play it became apparent that I did not have as much of a well rounded idea of the game play of the board game as I had with the card game. In trying to explain the loose rules of the game with my roommates (Gaming student and Graphics student) we talked out what potential ways that the game could be played. I quickly decided on more concrete rules of the game for the sake of that game testing session.
From the beginning of the development process for this game, I knew that I wanted the gameplay to be centered around the collection of objects from players. Mythological objects are placed around the board and players must go around the board to gather these objects. For the sake of this game, I utilised coloured game pieces from the game Risk as the character playing pieces, and the silver Monopoly objects as the collecting pieces.
For the gameplay, players moves are controlled by a dice roll, and once they land on an object piece (to collect it) that piece does not get taken by the player. It gets left for other players to collect. The first player to collect all of the objects is the winner. In order to mark collection of objects for the testing, I created a tally system as shown below.
After and during the game myself and my roommates discussed the different elements we liked and didn't like. Overall, my roommates felt that it became quite repetitive in terms of game play. As there were no special spaces or extra card elements, it just became us rolling the dice and moving around the board which was not very engaging or fun. They said that the inclusion of special cards or squares would create more dynamic gameplay. We also identified that with the current game play and board that if someone is winning there isn't really a way of stopping them, which is obviously not the best.
My initial idea for an object collection based board game came from a game based on one of the 5 party games from the Wii game Wii Party. The game is called Globe Trot, and is a game where players go around to different continents to collect an assortment of different souvenirs. There are a number of special spaces, which allow you to buy different move space cards or earn money to buy the different souvenirs. As with my game, the winner of the game is the player who can collect the most objects first. Since this was my initial idea for my game, my roommate suggested that I should try and adapt this game into an analog format within my topic. This would be too advance the current game design that I have at the minute. However, I think trying to adapt this highly intricate digital game may turn out to be too complex for my target audience.
At this point I decided I would try to lay out more structured rules for the game. However, with the current map layout that I had I was finding it quite difficult. I took this as a sign to look back at some of my other sketches for the board game design at which point I had found these sketches below from my initial board game designs.
With this more structured layout, it was far easier to lay down rules for the game. The game is structured around a system of rings, which are brought together in a spiral shape. There are 3 different rings, for the first 2 rings there are a certain amount of items that players must collect in order to move on to the next ring. If you do not land directly on an object you must either wait to go around another time or hope that you land on a special card which allows you to attain this object. Special cards can be taken when players land on the special squares on the board marked with a star. There are 4 different special cards, which are as follows: Steal 1 item from another player, Swap items among players, Forfeit one of your items, and Go directly to a desired object. Once a player lands on a square with an item, that item is not taken off the board. Instead the player is given a little token with the name of the object on so that they can keep track of which items they have collected. The first person to collect all of the items and get to the finish square in the middle of the board first wins.
After finalising these rules and drawing up the new design for the board, I made up a rough test board and pieces, and roped in my roommate Noel to test play the new board game.
Similar to the last round of testing, during and after the game myself and Noel discussed different aspects of play. Noel commented that this game was a lot more fun to play than the previous and he enjoy the new spiral design. However, he did observe that changing between the different layers of the spiral was a bit confusing. He recommended that the spiral be replaced with just simple rings or colour code the different changes in rings. We also both discussed how we would like if there were more than just 4 special cards. We found that we were landing on the cards often enough and the cards started to become slightly repetitive in the game play. Overall though the game was very fun and enjoyable to play and myself and Noel really enjoyed the test game. It is a large improvement from the last round of testing.
Going off this testing, it will take a bit more development of the game board and pieces to get it to a place where I am comfortable with presenting as my final output. Over the next day I will be reviewing both games at this point of development and deciding which output I want to move forward with based on which I think will be the most successful.