[Post #4] The Rat Pack v2 to v3

Group: 11

Game Summary

        Our game is based on a Stealth-based Baking theme game, aimed at college students. In this game you play as a squadron of rats in a bakery trying to gather as much food as you can without being caught by the head chef. Each player has access to a number of routes, and a number of different rats to choose to send out to gather food. The player with the most food by the end of the game wins.

Version 2 to 3

With version one out of the way and some external playtesting with version 2, we were ready to make a number of important corrections. With this edition, we put in extra effort to clarify rules that were too easily being skipped by our playtesters. There was not a lot of time for our playtesters to read through all the rules, so they did a lot of skimming, which resulted in some thinking that certain mechanics had no effect on the game. We added in a few images to help guide the player back to these mechanics and further emphasize their importance. In the future, once we have done enough playtesting, we would like to make use of more icons to indicate importance. It would also be nice to include some of the rules embedded on the individual player boards so that referencing said rules would be more succinct. 

Rule wording has been our bane since the very beginning of this project. Our game doesn’t resemble very many mainstream games, so we don’t have as much to draw from. Without painstakingly searching hundreds of form posts or somehow playing a variety of exotic games, it’s hard to find a good example to base our rules off of. Even something as simple as explaining that a rat’s Load is the maximum amount of food they can bring back on a single run, poses quite a challenge. We also wanted to be very consistent with our keywords, so we combed through our rulesheet and made sure all our keywords were bold and capitalized. Ideally adding an icon next to a keyword would make for a nice way of tying the mechanics to a visual that we can place on the board, but those icons take work to create and format, so we had to leave that on the chopping block for now.

Playtester’s Feedback

The feedback we received on the game was pretty minimal, but one thing is clear, our playtesters do not want to read through all our rules to get started playing. This was the same problem I encountered with my Solitaire mod. Given that most of our playtesters are not in much of a position to dedicate a lot of time and effort to critiquing our work, it’s clear that the more we can do to relieve the burden of absorbing a complex rule system, the better. Most of the people who have or will playtest our game are not likely to play it more than once, so it’s best if we can make that one experience as stress free as possible. We also learned that not everyone understands our terminology, so it is important to include a visual to help clarify our intentions.

How to Proceed

Personally I would like to move most of the rules to the player board. I want to have any math-based rules there, as well as the actions one can take each turn. I think that the rulesheet is a good place for exceptions, side remarks, and other pieces of information that are a bit wordy, but that the board, or a rule card, would have a nice and concise summary of standard play. If we have the time to do something like this, I think it would greatly improve the readability and speed at which people are able to get up and play our game. That is how I would like to proceed from here. 

Week #2: The Jump from Version 0.1 to 0.2

 Week #2: The Jump from Version 0.1 to 0.2

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Group: 8

Game Summary

Our game is based on the Klondike version of Solitaire, but with a twist. We aimed for a game that gives you more chances to beat ordinarily unwinnable games. In our modification of the game we allow two uses of a card searching mechanic to retrieve a card in the Talon or Stock that would otherwise be inaccessible, as well as a pair of Joker cards that act like wild cards in other games.

Update v0.1:

It's week #2 working on our Solitaire Mod for CAGD-170 Video Game Design class and we have made many major strides from the very inception of the project, to today.

In version 0.1 we focused on a minimal design that included pictures. We wanted to present our players with just enough information to understand the game, but not overwhelm them. We were also determined to rewrite the official rules using our own language in order to distinguish ourselves from it.

We found that our minimalist approach left out too many details. There were so many rules of Solitaire that we had never had to explain on paper that we were bound to miss a few. Eventually settling on a more expanded and thorough design, we wrote out the rules in such detail that it could have been used to author a digital version of the game.

We actually went through three or four iterations on version 0.1. Wording was very important, as well as how we formatted our terms. Did we capitalize Aces and Kings? Should we always capitalize the names we gave to the various areas of the board? What terms should we use for those areas? The ones the official rules use, or ones we make up? We also found ourselves concerned with the images we were using. My partner took pictures of her deck which included a bunch of fun graphics on it. Unfortunately that caused the visual to be more confusing and busy. She was able to find a deck that was a bit more consistent on the back-facing design, and she photographed using a dark mat to help increase the contrast. This really helped our rulebook look a lot more professional. Ideally we would use illustrations, but that's a time consuming task which is much too demanding for where we are in the design and prototyping phase.

Originally, we had the Tableau as the Gameplay Stacks, the Foundations as the Winning Stacks, the Stock as the Deck, and the Talon as the Draw Pile. There wasn’t anything terribly bad about these except that when we went to explain how cards/stacks were moved around the Gameplay Stacks, things quickly became confusing. Eventually we went back to the official rule terms. At least this way if people look up rules for the original game, they will already be familiar with these terms.

Update v0.2:

In version 0.2 we discovered that our players had to read all the rules before they could even begin to play. With nearly three pages of rules, we felt that was going a bit far. We wrote up a section using very casual language to step our players through gameplay, while mentioning any outlier rules. We included a more concise gameplay loop after just in case someone wants more of a checklist.

Overview

Our game is looking a lot better. I like the direction we are going that allows users to pick up and play quicker. I also like using more relaxed, casual language that makes it sound like the rulebook is having a conversation with the player. Solitaire is a game about passing the time and keeping yourself busy when you really don’t have anything better to do, or you simply don’t want to strain your mind on other tasks. There is still a lot of work to do. Our document’s formatting got a bit messed up and we just can’t sit by idly knowing that it needs a tune-up.

We’re looking forward to any feedback our players can provide! Don’t hold back! Every data point brings us closer and closer to the perfect Solitaire mod!

I have included a link below to a PDF of the current rulebook. It's messy, but please feel free to try it out!

Antidepressant Solitaire Rulebook V0.2

Week #5: Solitaire Mod Project Postmortem

 CAGD - 170 - 1 - Video Game Design

Week #5: Solitaire Mod Project Postmortem

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Antidepressant Solitaire Postmortem

A Mod of Klondike Solitaire

Group: 8

Game Summary

Our game is based on the Klondike version of Solitaire, but with a twist. We aimed for a game that gives you more chances to beat ordinarily unwinnable games. In our modification of the game we allow two uses of a card searching mechanic to retrieve a card in the Talon or Stock that would otherwise be inaccessible, as well as a pair of Joker cards that act like wild cards in other games.

Target Players

• Number of Players: 1
• Player Types: Achievers, Strategists, Casual Players, Explorer
• Player Interaction: Single Player vs Game

This game is designed for a single player to enjoy on their own, within a limited space. It involves strategic choices, some of which may cause an ordinarily winnable game to lose. 

Problems Encountered in the Iterative Design

Clarity of the rules was a huge hurtle. We wanted to be short and concise, but we found that there were still plenty of rules we needed to at least mention, which dramatically increased the size of our rulesheet. Eventually we settled on a casual set of step-by-step rules on how to get started and continue playing the game, as well as a section describing the full gameplay loop for those more technically inclined. 

Terminology was a back-and-forth battle between inventing our own names for the various areas of the game, or using the naming convention proposed in the official rules. We ultimately settled for the official names, as we were creating rules to lay on top of the original Solitaire system, not ones that dramatically altered it.

Task Completion within the Group

On the whole, most of our tasks were completed on time, and quite thoroughly. Group members were in constant contact with one another, and provided helpful feedback when possible. The biggest task that could have received more attention was external playtesting. We needed to get the rules in the hands of more people to receive more data on how the game was shaping up, or if there was anything critical that was missed. With how easy it is to lose a game of Solitaire, if our playtesters only played it once and lost, that is not really enough information to tell us whether our rules are working with, let alone improving, our game. 

What would I Change about my Development Process

Early playtesting with people other than myself and team members would be at the top of my list. The more I can hear live feedback on how my players are receiving the game, the better game I can produce for them to play. In an ideal world I would be taking my game to board game meetup groups and pulling people aside to try it out, live in front of me. I would give them short surveys to do, and be taking notes on their reaction to the game. Essentially I would be collecting as much data about my modified version of Solitaire as humanly possible so I know whether this game is heading in the right direction, or whether I need to pivot it's design. Worst case scenario, I would find out that my game is not fun at all, but doing so early would allow me change when it is easy to do so, and I have not invested as much time and energy into the project.

I think I would have also liked to use more illustrations as opposed to photographic images, though illustrations require a certain level of skill and commitment that we did not quite have at our disposal. If we planned to publish this game in an any official capacity, I would strongly consider updating the images we used to better guide our players through the rules. 

Week #7: 2-Player Board Game - The Rat Pack - From Version 0.1 to 0.2

  CAGD - 170 - 1 - Video Game Design

Week #7: 2-Player Board Game - The Rat Pack - From Version 0.1 to 0.2