From Space Battles and Penthouses to Robbing Gold

On Wednesday we had our first Ludology and Gameplay class, it was great to just work on some games from a simple, albeit constrained approach. With 15 minutes and various other constraints we had to design a boardgame that could be handed over to another player with no explanation... time was TIGHT! I ended up going with a space themed game that contained elements similar to Ludo, with marginally more real choices.

The game was essentially a two player race to the centre where players move forward based on their dice roll, if a 6 is rolled you move the other players piece and if a player lands on an occupied square the two players battle it out by way of a highest roll. While I'm happy at getting the chance to make the game I feel the game suffered from being a bit too basic and needed some more meaningful choice for the players. A little more clarity in the rules would also have gone a long way towards helping the testers but its amazing what pops up in playtesting that the designer doesn't think about.


Along with my own game I played two other games. One game involved moving construction pieces from each players "Depot" to the centre of the board, where there was a building site. Once all the pieces were in the centre players needed to roll an even number to place a piece on their tower, the first person to finish their tower wins the game. The game was equally as fun as mine, but it too lacked the sense of choice compared to many of the boardgames I've played. As a group of 2 we had to develop one game further and hand it over to another team for testing, we felt that the only way to decide was to roll a dice and luckily for me it was my game.

After this our group played another groups prototype while they played ours. It was interesting to hear what questions and comments the other group had about our game and the rules of it. The game we played was a gold gathering game where players moved on a grid and gathered gold, the player with the most gold at the end of the game wins. We had some difficulty setting up the game and I'm not sure we played it as the designers intended but it was fun and interesting trying to figure out the game.


One thing I noticed with all the games I played was that they were lacking in meaningful choices and generally the winner was decided by chance. I think this is probably as a result of the time we had, our inexperience and the constraints imposed upon the games. Hopefully I've learned some lessons for next time.