Week 11

This week in class we began playtesting our games that were based off of Battle Battle. We had begun discussions over the theme for what our villains would be the Thursday that we were put into groups, but the idea of catching each other's names went right over our heads. This led us too not restart the conversation until the day before the first playtest. We ended up throwing together a game with mob goons as villains and locals as heroes. The way the game was intended to be played was have the players use hero cards of their choice to attack the villains in a strategic, but cooperative way. Throughout the design process I felt that I had to dial back certain villains and how much health they had as compared to the heroes to prevent issues that occurred in the first play test with the Dungeon Crawler game. I wanted to make the game difficult to get through with all the hero cards in play, but not too difficult that it was overly frustrating to play. Another way that I tried to balance the game was by making the hero powers complement each other to make it where one player is not just leading the charge the entire time. Of course, I did not want the game to be something that anyone can breeze through without some type of trial or tribulation so I added in the shield for the villains. I wanted to give the players agency as defined by Janet Murray on page 116 of Critical Play, “the satisfying power to take meaningful action and see the results of our decisions and choices”. I felt that the powers that a few of the heroes had would help in reaching that goal, but I was unable to see how it played out. I had missed the last day of playtesting which was bittersweet because I wanted to see how the games from Tuesday had evolved and changed, but I needed to be in Dallas for some work that is going to help me line up a career after Texas Tech. I do wish that my group and I had gotten in contact with one another sooner so we could discuss the game in more detail and split up the work. Of course, we were not going to be able to create a game that would sell out on the card game equivalent of Steam, but I wanted to make something that at least led to some laughs and jokes. The gameplay was far too rushed and not play tested near enough as I only played against myself and my roommate for a round before, he left for work. This is part of the reason I designed the cards in the way that I did so that the players could at least have something that would distract them from thinking about the logistics too hard. Obviously, funny names and pictures do not replace good game design, but at the end of the day I just wanted the players to have fun.