Post #7: Playtesters 2

Playtesters 2

Playtested Games

• Maze Crawler (Group 3)

• InuVasion (Group 5)

• Deckeria (Group 8)

• Spellcasters (Group 9)

Preamble

    Of the games playtested this week I chose to play the game InuVasion. I felt that it had the most developed gameplay, with most interesting set of decision making opportunities. This game was produced by group 5, and all the art, in and out of screenshots, belongs to them.

Game's Premise

    "The year is 2075. The city of San Francisco has been in a state of Cold War with

the evil Dog Spirits for twelve long years, but the silence has been broken. The King of

the Dark Spirits, Echo, has begun his next strike on the city that he loathes. However,

Echo’s sister, Angel, the Queen of the Good Spirits, has chosen to bestow her power

unto two young heroes in an effort to ward off her evil counterpart. Now, Kuro and Ishi

must build up their strength and enlist the help of their companions in order to defeat

Echo." ~Extracted from Group 5's rulesheet

InuVasion (Group 5)

Liked

I like how I can choose which direction I want to travel in after I roll my dice, and how my movement continues along a wall if my character would run into one. This allowed for many interesting movement opportunities, and really lent itself to the game’s significant player choices.

Disliked

There’s a lot of inconsistency in the language, and I’m sorry to say that the dramatic elements felt like they were cluttering the rules more than enhancing them. There would often be a moment when I was asking what a dark dog was, and why it wasn’t explained until much later. 

Improvement

The more information that the players can gleam from the player board the less they will have to keep referring back to the rules, so I would suggest adding even more info onto the board. Everything from simple parenthesis that say how much max strength you can have, to loot roll tables, feel like they could fit nicely on the board. 

Formal Elements of InuVasion (Group 5)

Players

• Who is Playing: 2 players

• Types: Cooperators, roleplayers, Mid-Maxers, Achievers, and maybe some Collectors.

• Interaction Pattern: Players vs Game

Objective

• Two players cooperate to defeat the boss. 

Rules

• Player’s choose characters which have different stats, different items they can equip, and different secondary objectives. 

• Characters move horizontally and vertically on the board, moving along walls if their movement would put them past it. 

• Tiles represent different events and can contribute both to their obstacles and their resources. 

• They must complete certain tasks before facing the boss.

Procedures

• Movement is determined by die rolls and the individualized player board for each character. 

• Items, stats, and tasks are tracked on the player boards. 

• A deck of cards is used to determine final boss health. 

Resources

• Offense: how good you are at defeating encounters.

• Defense: how good you are at surviving encounters. 

• Strength: used in calculating offense and defense.

• Items: provide offense and defense.

• Movement: gained from dice rolls. 

• Tasks: required to complete before progressing to the boss. 

Boundaries

• The player boards bound the players to a grid of tiles.

• Dice and deck of cards bound the player to six-sided dice and 52 standard playing cards. 

Conflict

• Characters must survive a number of encounters before going up against the boss in order to win. Encounter success is based on dice roll and the character’s stats. 

• Each character has at least one task they must complete before they are allowed to fight the boss. 

Outcome

• Either both players win, or both players lose. (Zero Sum Game)