Post #6: Gentleman's Dash - Version 1

Gentlemen's Dash

Version 1 to 2

Group: 7 (The No Name Guys)

Game Title: Gentlemen's Dash

Game Summary

    Gentlemen's Dash is a game about balancing speed for style. In this game you play as a scientist racing other scientists to get in line first for the money grant offered by your local academy. However, being first does not guarantee you the grant, you must still conduct yourself as a proper gentleman in order to earn their favor. Go too fast and you risk losing to your opponent building up more points than you, go too slow and you risk missing out on the large finish line bonus. 

Version 1

    With my previous experiences in creating board/card games I found that our group would regularly come up with too many features or we would leave too much room for future features, so I pushed for a game that was extremely simple, but that could achieve a decent level of depth. My aim was a game that could be played with nothing more than a couple decks of cards and maybe some paper and pencil to keep track of things. I chose a standard deck of playing cards because of how likely people were to have one. Same with coins. I wanted the whole game to be something that spectators could look at and think, “Oh I think I get it” or, “that looks simple enough.” I might like to present our playtesters with two different rule sheets. One sheet would be our more detailed version that we currently have, and the other would not be as thorough, but would be much more condensed. I wonder if we are underestimating our future players or overestimating them. I also thought it would be nice to have a single card that has all the information you need to play the game without constantly referring back to the rule sheet. Can it be done? Just how much information is truly needed to play this game? How wide a gap can I make in a logical leap where the average person can work it out? I have seen games with almost no rules and have thought that those systems were the most elegant and pleasant to absorb. Can our game do the same? I think it helps that this game is done so quickly and that the point values are relatively easy to remember, but I could think that simply because I originally conceived of most of it. I am happy that my partner has been able to go along with it and “pick up what I was putting down.” He has been a big help in getting the game to where it currently is, and I am enjoying our collaboration.

Version 2

    We did not do too many big changes to version 2, most of it was tweaks with little to no new features added. I think that is the best way to iterate on our design as we still have not received much feedback on it from playtests. Most of what we did was lower the bonus received from crossing the finish line, and make the really high movement cards worth no points to make the lower movement cards more worthwhile. Because our finish line is represented simply as a distance in meters, my partner came up with the idea that the players had to reach that distance exactly in order to get the finish line bonus. This automatically placed more value on the lower movement cards, which was what I wanted all along! Very clever idea, and now the game feels really strategic, without feeling overly complicating or lacking depth. 

Overview

    I am really enjoying the result of this game, and I think it is something that once we dress it up with some more visuals, it could pass as a rather pleasant game. My only concern is that keeping score in real time is a bit tedious, as you are keeping track of two different numbers for yourself, and the two different numbers for your opponent. Using Excel is great for this, but for an actual card game it would certainly be better if the players had less to keep track of. I would also like to add more dramatical elements, but I don’t want to sacrifice the simplicity nor the clarity that the game currently provides. We will need to tread carefully with how to change our rule sheets, but I think we will know more once we’ve received a decent number of critiques. 

[Post #5] Rat Pie - Post Mortem

• Rat Pie - Post Mortem

  by Weston Campbell

  
  

  Group: 11 (The Rat Pack)

  
  

  Game Summary

  Rat Pie is a game about running rats through several routes in order to bring back food. The challenge is to make it through the route without being spotted by the head chef, and bring back more food than your opponent. The player with the most food at the end of ten rounds wins the game!

  
  

  Target Audience

  • Player Types: Competitors, Jokers, and Achievers

  • Player Interaction Pattern: Player vs Player

  • Age Range: 18-30 (College Students)

  • Appeal

  • Playing anthropomorphized rats as they scramble for food in a kitchen encompasses a lot of elements that many generations enjoy. Playing as animals is almost always a crowd favorite, and food is heavily ingrained in our culture’s values. There is a bit of strategy involved as you must make the choice of which rat to use, which route to run, and whether you want to move the rat this turn, or attempt to sabotage your opponent. 

  
  

  Obstacles Encountered in the Design

  
  
  Our game was originally meant to be a stealth, baking game for college students, which turned out to be trickier than we had first imagined. The first major challenge was keeping everything to individual player boards, as opposed to having a shared game board. In the end, we still felt that players would need to synchronize their player boards in order to simulate a shared space. Then came the issue of stealth. Stealth with player boards was very unusual, and it was very difficult to find any other games employing that kind of stealth that was also a fun mechanic. Our final result was just a gambling mechanic reflecting the likelihood of a rat getting caught by the head chef. We also included an awareness system which was supposed to go up whenever a player attempted a sabotage, however our playtesters never used our sabotage mechanic, and it felt like they didn’t think it was worth it. 
  
  

  One of the other surprising effects of developing a game in this environment was how few people made an effort to play our game. We suspect that it was a combination of the rules not quite being simple enough, and there not being enough visuals to help reinforce said rules. While I would much prefer to hammer down the mechanics before getting too into the visuals, it seems like next time we need to get those graphics out sooner to attach more playtesters.

  
  

  Task Completion

  My team was very on top of it. We met regularly, at least three times a week to work on the game, and each of us worked on an equal share of the work. I was fortunate enough to be paired with two talent artists who made the graphical design work look easy. Given the amount of time we had to work on the project, and many of the limitations thanks to the COVID-19 virus, we were only able to go so far with this project, but I think we all did a great job outputting the work that needed to be done every week. 

  
  

  My Role in the Group

  I ended up becoming the team leader merely because I was a little more organized. I would post Google Doc links up plenty of time before we needed to get started on the next task, and I would help nail down our next meetup season. I really didn’t mind the role, and I hope I made a good impression on them. 

  
  

  Future Projects

  Going forward it is clear that we need to heavily appeal to our playtesters if we want to get any valuable feedback. This means more visuals, less words, and quicker play times. I think that the next game I work on I would like to see how far one can get without words, and whether we can capture a number of time-tested mechanics that can be employed quickly and easily. I would essentially like to make a spring-loaded game that takes almost nothing to set up, and looks simple enough to start playing even if the players haven’t read all the rules yet. 

Final Rule Sheet: Rat Pie Final Version