Boardgame Assignment So Far

I've spent WAY too much time on this so far, Friday was spent trying to force out a game for a theme that I wanted to use. I tried it as a boardgame, a card game, a tile game and any mix of those elements but I realised that I just couldn't do it, not within the guidelines for the assignment. So when Saturday rolled round and I was trying to force a game that wouldn't work I decided to scrap it, put it in a folder for half thought out ideas and try something different.

This time I focused on the mechanics, I thought about how I wanted players to interact, what I wanted to encourage and what I could do differently. The first prototype was a circular game board as shown below, pieces moved inwards and attached each other, cards could be played to provide advantages pieces could be stacked and divided as required, something about it felt good. There were still a lot of issues after the first playtest so I quickly changed some rules based on the feedback, used the same board and played again. It was more fun this time, the refinement of the rules had allowed more strategy to be used, more creativity in execution, moves I hadn't expected.


The game worked, but it was missing its theme, eventually something fit, it allowed the mechanics of the game to add to the fiction of the world. Another prototype followed this, I used the pieces from settlers of catan, the new shape of the hex was more natural for movement, I refined the rules some more and here I am now, working on a final prototype for class tomorrow, hopefully it all goes well!

Some More From Game Maker

I spent some more time today working on my Game Maker game, I really need to come up with a name for it and that's bugging me a bit at the minute. If anyone has any ideas for names I'd be interested to hear them.

I'll keep this post short and just show an updated image. Its puzzles tomorrow morning so I'll need an early night to have my brain someway functional in the morning. I did run into a few problems with using GML, I had over complicated some areas but managed to fix it easily enough after some hair pulling. I'm quite happy that I managed to get the station to shoot the payer and to stop once the player captured it. I think it needs a UI soon but for now I'll try get as much done as I can without it. From the screenshot below you'll see there's some issues with but I'll get to these with time. Anyway, here's how the game is looking so far:

Far Cry 2: Some More Thoughts

I've played some more Far Cry 2 over the last week or so and I've experienced the core gameplay at this stage and these are a few of my thoughts about the things that I liked/disliked:

• Immersion: Every aspect of the game is portrayed in first person view and the HUD tends to be minimal or context sensitive. There are no cutscenes and the player always has control. An aspect of this is that if you pick up older guns they can jam easier than newer guns and even if you're critically wounded you'll use a knife to pry a bullet from your flesh of pat down the flames around your body.
• Character: A major issue that I've found with the game so far is that the character is almost meaningless, I know nothing about my background or motivation within the game, this creates a big disconnect for me as I feel no empathy towards my avatar. One of the design goals for the game was player generated narrative but this has been a disappointment for me so far and I feel the design widely missed the mark in making the player feel invested in the outcome.
• Checkpoints: Not the save game type of checkpoints but rather the in game type where a group of NPC's with machine guns and a jeep shoot at you as you try to make your way across the map. This is becoming a deal breaker for me, every time I want to get somewhere theres generally plenty of NPC's to be dispatched along the way. I think a bribery system or less checkpoints might have been a better, even if less realistic, option. Another idea for this would be a territorial acquisition minigame where the player tries to capture as many checkpoints as they can to neutralize the NPC's and these NPC's wouldn't respawn after you drive away.
• Emergence: Every so often the game shows moments of pure brilliance, times when the player is given a set of tools and a goal and can use their own ingenuity to reach that goal. For example starting a bush fire can allow the player to flush the enemy out of a hiding spot and maybe eliminate a few as well.

Overall Far Cry 2 is a game with heaps of potential but it just seems too constrained, too confused about what exactly it is and what the point of it is to actually be engaging. I might put some more time into exploring the open world and maybe come back to it every now and then but I don't think this will be a game I finish quickly, at least not with Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light waiting to be installed!

5 Games in 5 Minutes

Designing and Playtesting

On Wednesday we had another Ludology class where we had some new constraints in the boardgames we were designing. One of which was that the game required at least 3 players which is a great way to change things up, for me it was a challenge compared to last week but eventually I came up with an idea that allowed for a scalable number of players. I had never considered this as a major factor but in fact the number of players has a big effect on the design of the game. For digital games I think it's an important to criteria to establish early in the process as certain games suit certain player numbers and the number of players will, I imagine, affect development time.

The game I made was called Around the World and it involved moving your piece around a circular board in order to get to the end of the game. A given card was required to move to the next tile and there were two special cards. In the playtest I think I had the card quantities completely wrong and a few rules needed tuning, the special cards were far too common and had abilities that required a very specific and rare set of events to be of use. As a group we decided not to develop my game and I think that was the right decision as Owens elemental card game has a lot of potential for a unique game. If I was to develop my game further it would be aimed at families using simple interactions and a more balanced deck. For now however I think I can do better so I'll not dwell on it.


The other games in the group were the elemental card game which we all felt had a lot of potential and decided to develop further. There was a cool game about flicking a ball over a ramp and into a ring which was good fun and very different to the standard boardgame. The final game was a cool mix of board/card game with some player embarrassment elements which was a cool way to implement some metagame features and was entertaining.

I think we'll be doing some puzzle stuff next week which I'm looking forward to as I wouldn't be very familiar with puzzles.