Week Four Progress

Goals for this week:

-Establish Design Values

-What I want Players to Get out of my Game

-Playtesting and What I learned

-Prepare 30% Presentation

What I Accomplished:

Establishing Design Values:

I took extensive notes prior to this semester on Design, Game and Play by Colleen Macklin and John Sharp. I reviewed this chapter and my notes so I could guide myself.

I began this process by brainstorming with sticky notes. I already had a lot of the pieces for my values, I just hadn't written them down or solidified them therefore they haven't been driving a lot of the decisions I have made when it comes to my game. This method allowed me to rapid think and get as many of my thoughts written down and then organized.

I then wrote out what exactly I meant by each of my thoughts in a document and what I wanted for each piece. (Link)

My main goal was for people to experience art in a new way that was honest by reflecting the characters, the themes, and the events behind art within the game itself. I chose these as my game adjectives.

It's about the Rococo.

{Rococo: frivolity, over-the-top, foreboding, and self-interest.

Game: frivolity, over-the-top, foreboding, and self-interest.}

What I want Players To get Out of my Game:

I did a similar process with this portion. Sticky Notes are the best for breaking down your thoughts.

This just had me reflect on why I chose the art period I did, who is was about, what was going on, and why I chose to do things the way I did.

I came to these conclusions for what I want people to get out of the game:

-To experience how history plays out through art and how each piece contributes to a larger picture

-To peel back the layers of art and unveil the "truths" underneath it

-To spark curiosity. ("Why were the words put with that piece?, etc.)

-(Obviously, to have fun)

Playtesting:

These last rounds really unveiled the problems with my point system. I have to rethink how it's going to work, if I want tokens at all, or if I want it more restrained.

Feedback:

-Like the new cards though a couple had weird wordings that I'll have to go re-write.

-Found the new actions different and refreshing.

-Sloth room didn't need to exist.

-Gambling room still remains a favorite.

-Re word some of the challenges (ex, Heart on Sleeve Card --> can't keep a serious face instead of blush)

-Make the syphilis card contagious for greater chaos

-Did like fate cards at the end, but was confused on how they tied in

-Still slight confusion on the tokens

Observations:

-Having players try to get to all the rooms first makes it so they don't try out certain room actions at all.

-Move the surprise room and see if people engage. Haven't been able to properly test.

-Need to rearrange and test the turn order. Having printed out cards helped with confusion, but they would need to re-read or there were actions they impulsively wanted to do first.

-Blue spaces need to have more going on. Get monotonous.

-People do feel attached to their character.

Does it fit with my design values so far?

For the most part, yes. It's nice to see how people react to the cards and the tasks. People laugh which is a good sign. It's meant to be humorous. I think so far, there has been a good balance between the dark stuff and the light elements. The best part so far, is seeing people react to the art itself. In all my playtesting, it's consistently an element that has been highlighted as one that people enjoyed. I get questions after about different pieces which is a major win for me.

Feedback:

Rethinking Point System:

As I develop more cards I've been able to do "full" play troughs during playtesting which unveils some overarching issues with my point system. I want to try and to modify some of the consequences on the cards to be more limited to the chips that are already in play and I also developed a "new" system.

Bang! is one of my favorite games to play with friends and I watched a playthrough of Vicious. I liked the physical set up of them, but also I was interested in how they used different points.

I decided to design a system where reputation chips are only allowed to go to 7. Where you end up decides your fate, but the amount of sin chips you have decides the winner, and tokens are mostly for in game play. This would require me to change a lot of the cards, since things would be weighted differently, but it might help complexity if sin and rep don't change one another at the end.

I also broke down the character cards like in Bang! and I want to play around with the idea of getting random actions.

It's also time for another iteration of the board:

What I Learned:

Having these design written out and actually thought through has already been a help with making intentional decisions behind changing my game. Playtesting this past week has really highlighted what isn't working. So, I know what I need to focus on this week and figure out. It feels like a setback, but I have the tools to be able to move forward.