Week 16 - Retro and More Playing

This week we will be playing the game we didn't get to play last week. It should be fun!

Overall I think I did fairly well this semester. I contributed quite a bit to our board game and was very involved in balancing the game. The game turned out well, and our team worked well together (besides losing 1 member in the last half of the semester).

Week 15 - Playtesting!!

This week people actually played our game, people from our class. This includes Emil!

It seemed overall like people enjoyed and understood our game. I also played the other teams games (except the card game a team made) and I honestly preferred "The Games Game". It was a lot of fun even though I got screwed quite a bit (6 turns in a row where I lost a turn).

Week 14 - Playtesting

This week we did more playtesting! We did a lot of balancing of different encounter cards and weather cards as some were a little too harsh while some felt better as more harsh.

Week 13 - Playtesting!

This week was all about the playtesting. We decided to change around the different distributions of cards. Originally we had 15 Salvage types, with 2 of each type. We've now changed it up so that there are 5 cards that are rarer than the others.

• Flippers
• Life Saver
• Bottle of Rum
• Oxygen Tank
• Spare Change

There are 2 of each of these cards. The other 10 cards there 3 of each.

We did this because we wanted to balance out the amount of uses each salvage cards has. Before lots of Salvage cards were used 4-7 times while some of them were only used 1-2 times. It should now be balanced.

Week 12 - Paper Card Creation

This week we "actually" created the different cards. It was mainly a lot of writing out of the different Salvage, Encounter and Weather cards.

After creating the different cards, we were able to complete our first playtesting session! We changed a few things but we definitely need to playtest some more.

Week 11 - Card Creation

This week I was back in class! We started creating the paper prototype for our game today. I focused on primarily creating as many Salvage and Encounter cards as I could. I think some of the cards I made were very creative and would give a nice flavour and humour to the game.

I personally came up with Davy Jones, The Kraken, and Loch Ness Monster cards. I really think they are fun cards to get.

Week 10 - Absent

I missed this week of class as I was sick! While I was gone, our members pitched their ideas to the group. They decided to go with Jason's idea, Maelstrom. Jason posted his work in progress GDD for the game into a drive folder and shared it with me. He updated me on their decision. So while I was out I pored over the GDD and made some suggestions to it. I wasn't going to not do anything because I was out of class.

Maelstrom GDD

Obviously this GDD is not the document that it was back in Week 10 (it has changed significantly since then) but it gives the general gist of things.

Week 9 - Brainstorming

This week we started brainstorming for the game that we will be making for the rest of the semester. We came up with a pretty nice idea of a spiral shaped board. We were spit-balling different ideas about how to set things up, and ended up with a board that looks like the one below.

Board Layout

Now this is all spit-balling, but it seemed like the group was pretty cool with the idea.

Week 8 - Presentation and Retros

This week I will be presenting our Europa Universalis IV presentation for probably about 10 minutes. It will be fun to lecture the class on why this game is the greatest of all time. I also get to show off my awesome France game where I have conquered quite a bit.

This semester has gone fairly well. I led the group in the group project, educating everyone on how the game works, and letting everyone choose what tasks they wanted to do (in true Agile form).

Week 7 - Project

I continued working on the project. I finished the Military and Economy sections, and now just have to do the Trade section. I will also take more screenshots of one of my EU4 games so I can put them in the presentation. Woo.

Week 6 - Project

This week, I continued work on the project. I finished the economy section last week, so now I will work on the Military section. I've also added several other sections to the presentation about the aesthetics of the game, and several other slides.

Week 5 - Project

This week, I worked on my project, defining the mechanics within the Military, Trade, and Economy dynamics of the game. I've included lots and lots of pictures of the game (in the presentation).

Week 4 - MDA and Group Projects

This week we were formed into groups for our group project. The project is to come up with what the greatest game of all time is, and then create a Mechanics, Dynamics, and Aesthetics document for that game. We chose my favorite game, Europa Universalis IV!!

We have to create an MDA document for it, which is going to be pretty extensive since the game has a lot of dynamics and mechanics within those dynamics. I'll be presenting the game presentation for our group since I was the one that chose it.

Week 3 - Aesthetics of Games

This week we went over the aesthetics of each game played over the previous two weeks. It was really interesting to see what each game had for aesthetics, as the funnest games (or more widespread) usually had the most aesthetics, which means they can appeal to a larger crowd.

Week 2 - Playing Board Games

I wasn't here this week. So instead I watched some videos of Small World. Yay.

Week 1 - Playing Board Games

We started Intro to Design this week! I imagine this won't be too difficult of a class. Today we played several board games, I played Settlers of Catan and Munchkin. Both games I had played before, so I was mostly teaching the others how to play them.

This is Settlers of Catan right?