My evaluation

Overall, we came across a lot of obstacles in our game’s mechanics and we ironed them out by playtesting and then altering them, they are not completely balanced now, but more so than before, we had a lot of issues with the over powered train and under powered pedestrian and balanced them out and tested them again, although trying to keep all the modes of transport different and not have them be carbon copies with only visual differences, but functional characteristics. These characteristics were defined by rules, so differrent rules would apply to different players, so the balance was crucial. We learned that we had to play our game with the intention of breaking it and finding ways fo fixing it.

The sabotage feature was added early on in the game’s development and although we were reluctant to get rid of it, we realised that not all features make it into the final game, like the city map on the board. We felt that sabotage allowed the players to interact with each other more directly and making them think up alternative routes. When we played through it we really enjoyed ruining other’s journeys and that felt like a secondary goal. Our game has a very basic aesthetic which lacked because we didn’t use our original idea of the city map, it would have added another layer to the game, making it seem less abstract and more relatable on a human level, seeing the roads laid out below you and having to make the jouney in your head before playing your move.

We believe our game had a strategic quality similar to Chess and an aspect of competition that set the tone for our game, although there were dominant strategies that we could not fully address and fix where skipping across all the stars; this will irritate players after a few play throughs, next time we may use less of them, making less of them may make it more of a risk, but it would be worth it for the reward.

Personally, the beginning of my blog had a litle humour in it and felt like it was written for an audience, but by the second and third lesson I began looking more closely into our game and wrote it for myself; any troubles we had, what we had achieved and what we needed to do, this way I was focused on reflecting and evaluating what we had done in the lesson and then use that information, to further develop our game and later refine it.

Lesson 08.03.11

A quick run through: Post it notes, hex board paper and card, colour coded to make it accessible and less confusing when picking a sabotage card. We divided the board up roughly in order to place all players equidistance from the centre – the destination, but found that wouldn’t be fair on the pedestrian and bicycle, so shifted the train and car to corners that were slightly further away.

This time, instead of switching modes of transport after every game so everyone gets to play each type, we stuck with our respective ones, this way we had  a control varible, our mode, and we changed how we played according to different strategies we would attempt in order to win. Some included the cyclist completely ignoring all sabotage cards, this meant no detours were necessary so they finished first. One play through presented an issue where the car could jump from one sabotage star to another all the while getting closer to the finish. This happened often, so we then shifted the stars until it caused the car nuisance to get to them, although it still felt unfairly overpowered.

This blog frequently mentions our difficulty in not making the train the ultimate mode of transport – a dominant strategy, to always pick the train! We began the playtesting with these rules on how many spaces the players can move and whether they could change directions in their singular movements.

Train – 4, linear, can not turn

Car – 3, non linear, can turn

Cycle – 2, non linear, can turn

Person – 1

Here, the car and train were very close to winning, the car because it had sabotaged the train and the train because it traveled there the quickest. Another time showed that that cycle won by sprinting through, forgotten among the revenge matches plotted by the car and train, although, not once did the pedestrian win. One square at a time didn’t bring them nearer the finish and the player didn’t detour to the stars simply because they wouldn’t be able to get to the finish before the others.

Next we changed the rules for the train to: Train – 3, linear, can not turn

Keeping the linear movement retricts the player, now it felt fairer, however other players were not winning because they were underpowered, the pedestrain laid down a few cards but still did not manage to win.

Still we hadn’t catered for the pedestrian and since both car and train could move 3 spots, we upgraded the person to 2 grids non linear movement, but now we had 2 of the exact same modes of transport because the cycle had these features too. Now the cyclist has to travel in 2 spots in a linear format. The player won once, due to the player’s strategy, downing the train and being agile enough to go around traps laid by others.

We decided to add a feature that we just thought of: The pedestrian can hitch a ride! Another player can gain a sabotage card if they give the pedestrian a ride for one turn to where they want to go, in essence the pedestrian commandeers their vehicle. We felt this was quite interesting as it directly interacted with other players. Playing with this feature in mind, the pedestrian was never able to jump on the same grid as another because they all zoomed away, until they were very close to the finish, where there was a sabotage infestation. This feature needs more work but we really liked how the pedestrian was made a little bit formidable, adding to that sense that anyone can win this race.

Each mode had the same number of sabotage cards so therefore the same number of sabotage experiences, 4 each. Although we had a curveball card for the pedestrian; having to go all the way back to their start position because they’d left something important at home, not instilling over-confidence in the player who can control others.

Next, we wanted to address the issue of the area around the finish becoming jam packed with sabotage cards. This was the case with every game and we ran through a few possible solutions, like a rule forbidding placing them in a one block radius around the finishing grid.

Lesson 02.03.11

Refining our board and position of other game objects and play testing our game was today’s priority. We printed ff a hex board and played thorugh our game without making players follow the map like our last prototype. We felt it was restrictive for some modes of transport and this involved a very well thought out and carefully considered city map with lots of attention on several routes in a time scale that wouldn’t allow it.

Our play through showed us that positioning the sabotage stars would be crucial, as on one game the train was near the destination but the nimble players kept on leaving train-contextual sabotage cards in their wake. Next week we will rearrange the stars so they aren’t too close together and in patterns, like 3 boxes apart all the time, here only the players who can move on odd numbers can get to them easier than those with even numbers. Also once we’ve finalised where the stars go,  we will make a bigger version of our board, adding some aesthetics.

Lesson 15.2.11

In this lesson we gained two new members in our group which was quite convenient since our other two couldn’t make it to class, totalling 4 we could play out a small part of our game. But before we did that, we briefed the newbies. This was almost like a pitch, trying to make what they’d be involved in as interesting as possible, since working on something you aren’t that passionate about can be a bit challenging and stale. They found the idea interesting and quickly noticed loopholes and asked a lot of questions which helped us realise what new players would think and what we need to clarify. Fresh and inquisitive minds tend to notice what we overlooked, so that was helpful, one idea raised was the idea of the train not being totally stuck to a route but having the shortest possible route riddled with red lights. We couldn’t implement that idea for our first play through, although we did note it down, especially since it helped balance the advantageous elements of the train with disadvantageous red lights, making it fair.

The rules for our mini prototype were basic and because of this we encountered issues which we discussed as they happened, like a car being in the same grid as a cyclist, could a scenario be that the car has run over the cyclist? Making the small map grid was a challenge in itself, at first I marked that starting and finishing points to make the task more coherent: so I needed to make a route that goes from here to there but there needs to be more than one route and some obstacles that occur naturally, not due to sabotage scenarios, like a park or a set of traffic lights. However these two both hindered the car driver and the cyclist if they abide by the same rules as cars which they sometimes are known for not doing!

The 4 players started on different parts of the grid and had to get to a square marked as ‘end’. We took it in turns, and moved according to the rules we had set in place, cyclists move 2 spaces, pedestrian move 1 place, trains move 4 places and the cars moved 3 spaces, however, we immediately came across an issue, could we move only part of the spaces we are originally allocated? Initially we said no because it may make it easier to grab sabotage cards, which are supposed to be a risk, to go slightly off-route to grab a sabotage card to ruin someone’s journey. However, if to the train is one space away from the destination and therefore one space away from the victory condition, they shouldn’t have to awkwardly U-turn to make it to the winning grid in 4 grids, that would be a nuisance.

Below is the prototype, the bottom left hand corner is the goal; the destination. Each player started off on different parts of the map, it was difficult choosing where to place them so as to not give one player an unfair advantageous. The players gain sabotage scenario cards by stopping on grids marked with a star (*). Sometimes this causes the player to make a slight detour, making a risk, and playing tactically.

The yellow pieces of paper are the sabotage scenarios, our team picked these as soon as they started playing, it seemed as if these were a vital mechanic, there weren’t many, just one affecting each mode of transport. Although, they always seemed to occupy the one grid radius around the destination. As most of us got stalled trying to get past the last grid or so, we discussed setting up a ‘safe zone’, where sabotage can’t be placed in that area, although this will need to be tested out, because if a player gets past that mark there will be no way anyone else can win after that opint, which may hinder the game: placing limits on sabotage.

I used colour to make it clearer, marking off blue for the roads and orange for the players.