CAGD 170
Unit 2 Postmortem
10/29/23
Game Summary:
Trench is a new thrilling board game about venturing into the depths of the sea. In the game, made by Group 12’s Yonathan, Hana, and Olivia, players must try to survive the ocean depths by managing their resources and getting as many points as possible the deeper they dive. Encounter different creatures in different areas, and kill them for points or scare them away to reserve your air.
Target Audience:
This new game is made for older couples who want to challenge each other and find out who is the better resource manager. With the unique creature cards that differ in each area, players will have to think 3 steps ahead to get the upper hand.
The game is a Multiple Individual Players vs. Game with some Player vs. Player elements. Each player gets their own board and will play the game separately while competing to see who gets the most points after 20 turns. Some cards can directly target other players while others affect both players.
Players can play the game for fun, or switch up their play style after every game to throw off their partner and keep them on their toes.
Development Process:
When developing the final edition of the game, we looked at some player feedback and realized that instead of putting in words which actions use which resources it is much easier to just put the pictures of the resources. When I looked at the review I compared it to when I had my friends help me playtest and saw that the review was correct in terms of accessibility as when one of the players forgot she had to read and look for the action. Realizing this I removed the words and replaced them with pictures as well as underlining and making the action bigger and easier to see.
From Top to Bottom, Before changing images and After
When watching a different group playtest our game, we realized that having stuff on the creature cards that we didn’t explain in the rule sheet made it harder to understand what the card was saying. Upon realizing this we fixed it in the 3rd version of the rule sheet explaining everything on the cards that we didn't have in the rule sheet.
Right before the last forum post was due, my group and I realized that we forgot to upload our new rule sheet. In a hurry, we uploaded it and hoped that some people would playtest the game and leave us some good back. The next morning, I checked and saw that we only had 1 review and was upset that we could have had more to work with, but upon looking at it, I saw that the one person who did leave us a review did an amazing job thoroughly telling us what we could improve on and why it would be better. Due to this, I was able to add ‘titles’ to the creature cards to help describe what each of the card effects do while keeping it relative to the cards themselves.
From Top to Bottom, Before adding titles and AfterImproving upon my last project, my group and I made sure to include pictures of the board and examples of how the players should start their game. (Shown Below) Unfortunately, with the amount of information and rules of the game, we weren’t able to make an infographic of the game as it would have been too much to fit on one page without making all the words super tiny and hard to read. Due to this, we tried keeping all of our information short and precise while properly explaining certain aspects of the game.
Changes that I would make:
One thing that I would improve on is playtesting. While I play-tested more on this project, I still did not playtest enough to improve the game substantially. Doing this in the future will help with the finer details of the game such as explanations of smaller elements rather than major changes in the rules.
Unit 1 Postmortem
9/24/23
Game Summary:
Soli-Two is a new version of the hit game Solitaire with all new rules and additions. This new version, made by Group 11’s Yonathan and Lily, brings out new ways to play using the all-new Joker’s wild card and a new pattern to stack cards. The Joker can now be used to replace any card in a column for when you just don’t have that one card to continue playing.
Target Audience
This game is made for everyone who wants to enjoy a new way to play Solitaire. With the new additions to the game, new players will be able to enjoy more ways and solutions to get themselves out of sticky situations.
Play can play the game casually or make it into a competition and see how fast they can complete the game in a certain amount of time.
Development Process:
When developing the final edition of the game, we realized from player feedback that the rules don’t state how many cards a person can draw at a time when drawing from the draw pile. When we saw the reviews the players left, my partner and I decided to clear any confusion and added that a player can only draw one card at a time into the rule sheet as well as not being able to go back into the draw pile to draw a card.
When looking at the reviews our peers left for us, my group found that they would have had an easier time setting up and playing the game if we had included more pictures of the final setup as well as how some of the rules worked.
We fixed this by adding some pictures to the rule sheet (as shown above) that indicate some of the rules as well as how the finished setup of the game should look. We took pictures of each of the unique additions that we put in the game, so it was easier for players to understand how the game worked.
We also updated our infographic rule sheet that highlights the main rules of our game from our previous ones. While we did have to shrink the font size we were able to make sure all the important rules were able to be seen and everything fits perfectly together. Below are the 3 different versions of the poster design that my partner made. (From left to right)
The 1st and 2nd versions of the rule sheet are quite different from each other as the 2nd version has more writing on it than the 1st version. The 3rd version (Bottom Photo) is similar to the 2nd version in amount of writing. What is different in the 3rd version than the 2nd, is that under the Joker image, there is an extra rule indicating that a player can not retrieve cards from the discard pile once more cards have been drawn. Another difference is that on the left-hand side, it specifies that only one card can be drawn at a time.
Changes that I would make:
One change that I would make during my development process is playtesting. In future game developments, I will play-test every change that is made to the game to make sure that the game is working as planned. This will help the progression of the game as it will allow me to add or subtract some elements to make the game shine even more.
Another change I would make is to differentiate from any original games even more. If my game was based on another game similar to it, I would change the elements of the original game so that my game would be uniquely different, and so that players would be able to recognize which game they are playing.
Soli-Two is a new version of the hit game Solitaire with all new rules and additions. This new version, made by Group 11’s Yonathan and Lily, brings out new ways to play using the all-new Joker’s wild card and a new pattern to stack cards. The Joker can now be used to replace any card in a column for when you just don’t have that one card to continue playing.
This game is made for everyone who wants to enjoy a new way to play Solitaire. With the new additions to the game, new players will be able to enjoy more ways and solutions to get themselves out of sticky situations.
Play can play the game casually or make it into a competition and see how fast they can complete the game in a certain amount of time.
When developing the final edition of the game, we realized from player feedback that the rules don’t state how many cards a person can draw at a time when drawing from the draw pile. When we saw the reviews the players left, my partner and I decided to clear any confusion and added that a player can only draw one card at a time into the rule sheet as well as not being able to go back into the draw pile to draw a card.
When looking at the reviews our peers left for us, my group found that they would have had an easier time setting up and playing the game if we had included more pictures of the final setup as well as how some of the rules worked.
We fixed this by adding some pictures to the rule sheet (as shown above) that indicate some of the rules as well as how the finished setup of the game should look. We took pictures of each of the unique additions that we put in the game, so it was easier for players to understand how the game worked.
We also updated our infographic rule sheet that highlights the main rules of our game from our previous ones. While we did have to shrink the font size we were able to make sure all the important rules were able to be seen and everything fits perfectly together. Below are the 3 different versions of the poster design that my partner made. (From left to right)
The 1st and 2nd versions of the rule sheet are quite different from each other as the 2nd version has more writing on it than the 1st version. The 3rd version (Bottom Photo) is similar to the 2nd version in amount of writing. What is different in the 3rd version than the 2nd, is that under the Joker image, there is an extra rule indicating that a player can not retrieve cards from the discard pile once more cards have been drawn. Another difference is that on the left-hand side, it specifies that only one card can be drawn at a time.
One change that I would make during my development process is playtesting. In future game developments, I will play-test every change that is made to the game to make sure that the game is working as planned. This will help the progression of the game as it will allow me to add or subtract some elements to make the game shine even more.
Another change I would make is to differentiate from any original games even more. If my game was based on another game similar to it, I would change the elements of the original game so that my game would be uniquely different, and so that players would be able to recognize which game they are playing.
Development of Rule Sheet
9/10/23
Game Summary:
Soli-two is a variant of the popular game, Solitaire, made by Group 11. This version has the same goal as the original but includes new rules that change the way the game is played. The new rules give more strategic ways to play the game and more opportunities to win. In exchange, there are now more ways a player can mess up their game depending on how they use each rule.
Current Version of New Rules:
One rule makes use of the 2 Joker cards in the deck of cards and has them act as a ‘wild card’ which means they can be used to replace any card and once a card is placed on top they act as a normal card and cannot be switched out.
Another rule implements the ability to match cards with their suits meaning the player is no longer limited to only putting the cards in alternating colors, however, the player can only choose between one pattern for each column.
The last rule added is the ability to move the Queen and Jack to empty columns to start a new column, which no longer limits the player to only be able to start new columns with the King and gives more opportunities to players.
Initial Development on Version 1:
Primary Gameplay: Before working on version 1 of Group 11’s rule sheet, I first had to learn how to play Solitaire normally before making or changing any of the rules.
Brainstorming: While I was learning, my partner was brainstorming some rules we could add to our version of the game. After learning how to play the game my partner showed me her ideas we could add to the game. I thought they were good ideas and I gave her my input on each one as well as made some changes to one of her original ideas.
Incorporation of New Rules: Once we figured out the rules we were going to add, my partner and I started to figure out how the new rules would affect the game and if there were going to be any contradictions with other rules. One problem we ran into was what the limits were going to be on the use of the Jokers and how we were going to prevent people from not using them the way they were intended to be used.
Creation of Rule Sheet V1: When making the rule sheet we initially had the Jokers act as a part of the pattern rules as there are 2 different colored Jokers in a deck. We also didn’t add the ability to move the Queen and Jack to start an empty column meaning the player was still only able to move the King to an empty column.
My partner designed a poster version of our rule sheet as it would look on a website. She did a great job making it simplistic and easy to read.
Playtesting:
When playtesting Version 1’s rules we found that only being able to use the Jokers according to the pattern rule made it difficult to use them to their fullest potential.
We also figured out that only being able to start an empty column with a King made the game more difficult as in some playthroughs the player couldn’t make any more moves because they were unable to move columns that had a Jack or a Queen to empty columns.
Creation of Rule Sheet V2:
As my partner and I were going through the first rule sheet to make any of our new changes, we moved some rules into the setup part of the sheet as they were a better fit there than they were in the rules.
We also got rid of unnecessary rules on our document as it was redundant to have them there.
We added the new rules and did some playthroughs to see if they were a good fit for the game and to mainly see if they broke the game.
My partner also added the new changes and rules to the poster version of the rule sheet.
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