Mini Game I: Process and Postmortem

Mini Game I

Process:

So we began creating our mini games by meeting and up and fleshing out ideas. We decided that we wanted to use building for our core mechanic. We then started coming up with our idea for our first game, Gangs. AS we came up with more ideas we started to write them down and explore them. After some mind maps and brainstorming we came up with the idea of having a base that we could destroy. So then the questions came, What would we destroy it with and what mechanics could we use? We then came up with having attack and defence cards. Kind of like magic in a sense where you would have attack cards that you would aim at your opponents base and your opponent would have defence cards to block incoming attacks vice versa. But we wanted it to make it more original and fun by adding in matching. So we came up with the idea of competitive matching as well as teams. So each team consists of two players. One player chooses to be offence and the other defence. The offence players lay out the cards and the same would go for the defence. Once the cards are laid the players have thirty seconds to flip as many weapons and defences as possible. Once the thirty seconds are over then the attack and defence round commences. The first team will attack first. The second team is allowed to block using the defences they have collected. Whatever attacks were not blocked will be taken away from their base points. after the first teams attack phase ends then the second team attacks and the other team defends. This seemed like a very sound idea at the time. However we found a couple of problems such as balancing and length of play. It seemed too quick and not possible for a team to destroy the opposing team in one phase. So we came up with the idea of making four phases with new defences and weapons that are stronger. We also added police cards to have the element of risk and reward while flipping. There are a set of police cards in each defence and attack deck. If one of the police cards are flipped they always stay up. If the second police card is flipped up, regardless of which team flipped it, they are "caught" and cannot collect anymore giving free roam to the other team. With balancing it like we did we thought we had a sound game for our play test. 

Our second game started off with us thinking about our sprint week game that e had created previously in first year together. It required building a pathway to the other side of the board. So with this we started brainstorming and mind mapping out ideas for our next game. For some strange reason with this game going through my head, I thought of the aesthetic of the game and what it was going to be like. Then it hit me, Pipes and Rats. I mentioned this to Matt, my partner, and he liked the idea. So we started working off of that. So for our path they were going to be pipes and characters were rats. For the building portion of the game we wanted it to be fast paced. We decided the way that we can do that is by have a turn based game with a deck of cards that have different tiles. The objective that we wanted for our game was to reach the end point first by building your pipe. We also wanted to incorporate a way that players could screw each other over. So we decided we would make different types a pipes that allowed players to move all around the board. We also decided that we should bottle neck the ending so the players have to make their way to the middle of the board and cross paths with the other player. We then came to a small problem. what if the player get stuck ? We  then incorporated a universal "cross-roads piece that both players can play, build, and move on. We found that the board was really boring so we decided to add in obstacles that players had to dodge. We also added in power ups to give the players secondary objectives to get. After going over this game a few times we felt that it was sufficient and was a fun playable game that was ready for our play test. 

Postmortem:

The assignment overall went well. It was a task to create two different games within a week but it was a lot of fun and I thought that it tested our skills as game designers. My team member was nothing but helpful. He was on point with ideas and gave back really good feedback when we were fleshing out ideas.

I played the role of the brainstormer and the one who put things together. However with this said Matt kept me level headed and on point because sometimes I let my ideas flow and sometimes i get lost in them.

I believe that our process was very effective. We met up, fleshed out a lot of ideas using brainstorming techniques as well as mind maps. This I believe enabled to come up with really good ideas as well as being able to come up with two decent games within a short period of time.

The only real difficulties that we encountered were actually coming up with a somewhat novel game idea. Other than that there were no problems that I believe are worth noting.

Well our main success I think is actually coming up with two playable and fun games. Also i believe another success is that we didn't limit our games to what they were during play test. Meaning that i believe that if we were to sit down and actually fully make our games that they would be a lot of fun and could be used not only for physical game play but also could be used as video game of some sort. For example, I think that Gangs and Pipes and Rats would be fun IOS game for the I-Phone or any type of android.

Looking back on what we did the only thing that I would change is we should have play tested more but due to lack of time and other assignments we were unable to do so. Other than my partner, Matt, was great and very helpful and I think that we created two really sound games.