board game creation reflection

 section 1: what changed from our original idea?

we started with conversations on ideas, our conversations revolved around having a star wars themed board game with a hexagonal map not too dissimilar to catan, on this map players would have free movement across connecting lines we decided that movement would be done with a D6 dice (this was the same across all versions of the game), and there were planets the player could go to get resources and tools to complete the bounties. we found this first idea interesting and we wanted to work with some of the mechanics such as tools, bounties and planets but we didn't like the idea for the map and felt like there were too many different ideas happening at the same time.

we then conceptualized and made the second iteration of the game, this iteration stripped down some of the complexities of the original idea and made it far more playable, this made this version easy to play test and improve. this version of the game had a semi linear map with some pathways that you could end up going down if you landed on them. each of the squares that you landed on gave the player different things such as bounty cards, tool cards and event cards, like the previous version tool cards were used to complete bounties. event cards could have positive and negative effects on the player an example of this was a card that allowed the player to steal a bounty card from another player.  

early concept for bounty and tool cards 

final version of the game 

the final version of the game was produced off of the back of multiple playtests and more conversations, from these conversations and playtests we decided to change the map and a few other aspects of game. the final version of the game closer resembled our original ideas, this version included an open map so players were able to go in any direction using the squares, dotted across the map were planets that the player could "land" on each of the planets had a piece placed on it depicting what you could get from that planet such as the store for tool cards, a bounty planet etc. I personally liked this system as it allowed the player to have freedom in their decisions on the board.

we introduced some new systems like the store that allowed players to spend the credits that they earned from the bounties that they completed, at the same time we implemented other ways to earn credits like the credits planet that gave the player 30,000 credits for every turn that they stayed there, to counteract players just staying there for the entire game we added a combat system in which a player moves to a square next to another player or onto the same planet as them, the player that initiated combat is able to take half of the other players credits this he discourages players from staying in the same place for too long. there was also a system in which players who were on the star destroyer could control three tie fighters, the dice roll you made each turn would determine how far you could move each fighter, a player that was attacked by a tie fighter would lose all of their credits and their tool cards.      

 section 2: how did we work as a team?

I thought we worked well as a team overall however I did think there were a few issues, mainly communication wise, we had a lack of communication within the class but did make up for this shortcoming by sharing ideas using discord, this was a great way to communicate ideas as we were also send images to each other of the things we were working on independently. we allocated ourselves different tasks as we went along to intelligently use our time. I was working on creating the bounty cards for the board game, I wanted to create highly detailed/quality cards so this small aspect of the game took me quite some time.

I was also guilty of lacking communication, this affected my work on the bounty cards as in the final product we had an economy issue in which some bounties ended up paying out less credits than what the player had to spend on the tools to complete that bounty, if I had communicated with Harrison who was working on tool cards we wouldn't have this issue with the economy in our final playtest.   

examples of bounty cards 

 

section 3: what would I have done differently? 

if I had to do this project again I would've made sure I was communicating better from get go as there were many issues that cropped up all throughout the project such as the economy issue, that could have been easily avoidable if I had worked closer with my teammates. I also feel like we should've established the idea for the game faster and had a more clear plan for what we were each doing so we were using our time in the most efficient ways possible. having clear would've allowed us to allocate tasks better and this would've given us far more time to game test and iron out the issues in the game.    

 I would also endeavor to complete the bounty cards faster, in total it took me two days to complete all of the bounty cards, if I had started making them earlier and made them quicker I would've been able to help with other parts of the project too accelerate our process to have more time to playtest hopefully improving the game more than the final version that we ended up with. 

section 4 : how do I think the development of the game fits the original brief? 

I felt as if we hit the brief successfully as we ended up with a playable board game. the game could've been better, however it was a playable game as all of the games systems worked in the final playtest, I thought all of the systems went well during the final playtest despite the economy imbalance that we ended up having.       

section 5: if we had more time what would we have added?  

I would've made sure that all of the reward credits on the cards fit the overall economy as this created some issues during our playtest, this economy issue made the game feel unrewarding and stunted the players progress in the game.

also I would've suggested that we made the board slightly smaller, this change would increase the amount of things that would happen on a turn to make the game more fun and encourage replay ability for the player.