Week 8

Monday:

notes to mention in the weekly brief:

Re-worked some of the rules for Faites Vos Oeufs, including more tokens for the player to play with (13,8)

The reason for this is that too many players were ending with 0 points at the end of the game

Made prototype for players' Game stand, nothing concrete yet but we are working on it to make sure that it integrates well with the mechanics, and also makes sense with the game world we have built.

Wrote the first drafts of the instructions for the tool in the ESCAPE.

making the character personalities and basic shapes in the ESCAPE in preparation for the illustrations.

• importance of using shapes to portray characters, creating a basic outline, 

• and creating in-depth characters with rich history,

• allows us to fit more storytelling with fewer words,

• makes intuitive sense for a player and they will immediately get feeling for the characters.

This week I'll try to get the cardholder prototypes finalised for the end of the week, along with some illustration briefs for Project Cold.

Due to budget, we have to make some cutbacks on Faites Vos Oeufs, or do we? I was reading the "Art of Game Design" by Jesse Schell and noted chapter 27 - "Your Game Will Probably Have a Client" which showed potential issues the clients can give, and although our issue is money, it shouldn't affect the game design. Although we are potentially getting rid of 3D wooden parts, we have to try to find solutions that not only keep the feel and gameplay of what we designed initially, but we have to compromise on price. so instead of being stubborn about it, I'm going to design as if the budget is unlimited in order to achieve the peak design that we are searching for, show the importance, and then start making cutbacks. this way we build a compromise on both ends, chipping away at the budget and the game design, rather than chipping away at the budget before the design.

Tuesday:

on Tuesday disaster struck! Igor's hard drive failed, and lost a bunch of progress that we had made on the games, including some diagrams and notes on Faites Vos Oeufs, and also the first part of Project Cold (50% of the project) essentially this means that we will both have to work hard over the next few weeks to ensure that we keep moving forward and recuperate what we have lost.

In other news, I've been reading more of the "Art of Game Design" and I've noted that a lot of games are designed for boys, as it is a male-dominated industry, but at the age, we are targeting, it is mostly 50 - 50, so we have to make sure that the game is designed for boys as much as it is girls, I looked at what Jesse Schell mentioned in his book and noted what Disney did in order to make sure one of their games was enjoyed by both sex's. 

"Boys: We had little worry that boys would enjoy playing this game. It is an exciting“adventure and battle fantasy ” where players can pilot a pirate ship, and man powerful cannons. Early tests showed that boys enjoyed it a great deal, and tended to play offensively — trying to seek out and destroy every pirate ship they could find. They engaged in some communication, but always stayed very focused on the task of destroying the enemy as skillfully as possible. 

Girls: We were not so confident that girls would like this game, since they don’t usually have the same zeal for  “blowing up bad guys.” To our surprise, girls seemed to like the game a great deal, but they played it in a different way. Girls generally tended to play more defensively — they were more concerned about protecting their ship from invaders than chasing down other ships. When we became aware of this, we made sure to create a balance of invading ships and enemies that could be chased to support offensive as well as defensive play. The girls seemed very excited about the treasures you could gather, so we made sure to pile them up conspicuously on the deck and make them visually interesting. Further, we designed the final battle so that flying skeletons would charge the ship and snatch the treasures off of the deck. This made the skeleton shooting task much more important and rewarding to the girls. The girls also seemed to enjoy the social aspects of the game more than the boys did — they would constantly shout warnings and suggestions to each other, occasionally having face-to-face  “ huddles ”  where they would divide up responsibilities. "

As you can see there is a difference, but we don't necessarily have to change mechanics, we may have to give something to the player to protect, instead of always chasing the bad guys so to say, I am going to try to introduce something for the player to keep and take care of, that maybe the bad guys will try to take from time to time. this way we avoid some repetition and it creates a more dynamic experience, but we also follow in Disney's footsteps of creating something that's more for a diverse crowd, we need to make sure that all 4 archetypes also have something to do, as we want to please as many players as we possibly can: 

Achievers are people who will play the game to beat the game.

Explorers are players who want to find out more about the game and find nuggets of information/secrets.

Socialisers are people who want to find out about the characters in the game and enjoy the interaction in the game.

Killers are players who want to feel like they are defeating the enemy and making an impact on the game world.

Wednesday:

Today I worked heavily on the board for Faites Vos Oeufs, I decided to take inspiration n from a boardgame I had recently played, Tribes of the Wind, where the board is 2D, and there are tokens that the player can move around and place on the board, and also cards that stand up and add verticality to the game, The prototype that I made manages to fit nicely in the box, and also removes the need for objective cards, meaning it cuts down on cost as well!

why does it get rid of objective cards? because I've decided to print your objective on the board, and each player will get a board, this helps our antisocial issue from the previous weeks as now players are incentivised and can target others. is this good? only testing will tell, but from studying Tribes of the Wind, I found that players only tend to look at each other's objectives near the end of the games, or when the players find themselves with fewer points than usual.  additionally, Faites Vos Oeufs is a relatively fast-paced game, so players may not have the time to think about looking at each other's objectives.

this 2D design with 3D elements throws a slight challenge though,  building, you see the tiles the players collect are placed onto the board, but I want them to be placed standing up so that they stand out and the player builds their nest. seeing as this is a family game we have to find a way to stand up the tiles in an easy way that is not going to be a challenge, it needs to be accessible, intuitive, and hard to break!

There are multiple ways to approach this, integrate the attach point into the game, make a flap that the player folds upon winning the tile, add a piece that slots in perpendicular to the tile so it stands, and so on, the objective is to find a easy way by the end of the week.