Code Breaker

Published in

Game Design Fundamentals

8 min readApr 30, 2020

Created By: Darrith Phan, PhilipRonnie Quiambao, Gabe Saldivar, Michelle Wan

Code Breaker is a multiplayer social mediation game where players select emoji sequences that match a clue suggested by the “operator” and attempt to guess which sequence came from the “operator”.

Will you be able to crack the codes? Grab some friends and find out!

Play the game here.

Artist’s Statement

We wanted to make a fun social mediation game, and so some of our first thoughts were to mod social mediation games we have previously enjoyed (Dixit). The main aspects of Dixit that we wanted to keep were a storyteller/operator giving a hint of what their card/sequence was and the remaining players submitting their own cards/sequence to fit the given hint. We also wanted to keep Dixit’s scoring system, where players are rewarded for not having every player guess their sequence and other players are rewarded when their sequence is guessed.

The parts of the game that we wanted to mod and improve upon were changing from using drawn cards to instead using emojis as the “cards”. We also found submitting only one “card” to be fairly limiting and so in our game we wanted to expand upon this by requiring 2–10 emojis needing to be used to submit for a player’s turn. By doing this players, could be more creative and expressive, along with having more option from a large hand of 10 emojis per turn. From these changes, we were confident we would maintain the fun aspect of Dixit because we modded most of the structure of the game, and we designed our additional changes in the hopes for a more creative and expressive game.

We also wanted our game to be able to be played digitally and so we made this game using Unity, so that people can easily download and play this game with their friends!

Mind Map

Below is a model which shows the game mechanics and how players will interact with them.

Initial Decisions About Formal Elements and Values

Concept 1 Stolen View: Our initial concept revolved around a cooperative puzzle game that places players in a situation where they must work together and utilize their resources to pull off a heist. In this concept idea, players are provided a view of a location that only they have access to. Using these views, players guide one player who is moving within the map and to help them to reach a determined location within the map without triggering traps.

Players: This game takes inspiration from the solution aspects of the game Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes where one primary player takes cues from other players in order to solve a problem. In Stolen View, we wanted the players to talk to each other and pass on their knowledge via communication in order to accomplish the shared mission of reaching a desired location without being caught by the game.
Objectives: Players interact with each other and use their visual resources to help the primary player reach a desired location within a map. This task lends itself to the capture and solution objectives.
Rules: If the player navigating the map triggers a trap, all players lose and the round is over.
Boundaries: Boundaries remain exclusive within the game and the time of play.
Resources: Players use visual cues as knowledge needed to progress in completing the game’s tasks of guiding the primary player through the map.
Conflict: Players must evaluate possible combinations of choices and navigate a maze like map in order to reach their objective.
Outcome: Players reach a win state if they are able to guide the heist into completion.

Other Concepts :

Battleship blended with Spyfall: Multiplayer, team-based game where players are given knowledge of their location within a grid and must communicate with their teammates to determine which grid space to attack. All conversations are heard by all players, thus communication between players must be discreet and, potentially, duplicitous. Players use the knowledge they surmise during the game to attack the opposing team in order to gain victory.
Dixit with a mix of Push the Button: Judging game based on unintelligible glyphs, symbols, and images. A turn based, card game inspired concept where players take turns submitting a glyph and description combinations. During a given turn, the remaining players will submit a false glyph based on the prescribed description as a way to throw off their competition and gain points. This concept draws from the game elements found in other turn-based, judging card games such as Apples to Apples and Dixit.

Code Breaker (Final Concept): Players utilize symbols to create a visual code to go along with a descriptive text. On a given turn a designated player will create a visual code using emojis and an accompanying text clue related to the code. The other players will then submit their own visual code that aims to represent the text clue. All codes are then displayed and players choose which they each believe to be the original sequence submitted by the designated player. Points are determined based on the voting.

Players: This is a player vs player game where players utilize their resources to deceive one another. The player creating the original code and text is known as the operator while all other players during that round are known as agents.
Objectives: Players must outwit their opponents in an attempt to gain votes and, in turn, points within the game.
Rules: Agents score points if they are able to identify the operator’s code. Agents can also score points if their submitted code is selected by other agents. The operator scores points if their code is selected by at least one agent but not all agents.
Procedures: Players take turns submitting code and text clues while remaining players submit their own codes to falsely accompany that round’s clue.
Boundaries: The boundaries of the game do not stretch outside of the game itself.
Resources: Players utilize their provided set of visual symbols to create codes and clues. Time is a resource that all players must use wisely or their votes will not be counted. Points are earned at the end of each round, and to win, players must accumulate more points than all other players.
Conflict: Players are placed in a position where they must select the correct code among false codes created by other players.
Outcome: The game ends in a win-state for the player who reaches the specified number of points first.

Testing and Iteration History

In class Playtest 4/21/2020: Google Docs — For our first playtest, Darrith moderated the game in a Google Doc along with using Google Sheets and Forms to accept sequence submissions from our three playtesters (Ryan, Chloe, and Nick). Since this was our first playtest we were mainly looking to see if our current version of the game was playable, and we were happy to see that it was and that we were able to go through four rounds of our game without any major problems. Some good pieces of feedback that we got were that: recycling emojis could be interesting because it allows for more creative expression from the players, and the players recommended that we scale operator points with number of voters (while keeping the rule where you get 0 points if no one or everyone guesses the correct sequence).

Google Form and Doc used to moderate our first and second playtest

In class Playtest 4/23/2020: Google Docs — Our second playtest was another in class playtest where Gabe moderated the game in a Google Doc along with using Google Sheets and Forms to accept sequence submissions from our four playtesters (Michelle, Tiffany, Iro, and Kavita). This playtest ran very similarly to our first playtest because during this period in between we were working on the Unity version of the game, and not many of the changes and feedback had been implemented for this version yet. We received very similar feedback in this playtest where the players really liked the concept and could see the game being fun when sped up through a digital platform. We also received the same feedback to improve our game of scaling the operator points based on the number of votes so that the closer they are to everyone guessing it correctly the more points that person’s sequence gets.

Outside Playtest 4/28/2020: Digital Version — For our third playtest, we finally had a playable version of our game digitally, and so we tested this version of our game with three new players (Helen, Andrew, and Chuanbo). This version of our game ran a lot faster than our non-digital playtests because our backend in Unity sped up the process of submitting sequences and showing them to everyone. Our players seemed to enjoy this version and there were lots of fun noises when people put in funny hints and sequences. Some pieces of feedback we gathered at the end of our playtest were that:

Scoreboard screen is too long
Error when you click on names in the scoreboard
No indicator for results
No indicator for when agents are waiting on other agents
Timer is too long for all rounds

Outside Playtest 4/29/2020: Digital Version — For our fourth playtest, we implemented the above changes from our most recent digital playtest and ran the game with four new players (Amee, David, Karen, and Jeffery). We received similar positive responses where the players had a lot of fun once everyone learned the rules through a couple of rounds. We received many great pieces of technical feedback such as:

Submit Button Unintuitive (Maybe choose another emoji?)
Backspace Button Unintuitive (Maybe choose another emoji?)
Adding Number of Players in room creation unintuitive
Tutorial is clipped on the left side
Operator choice: Display Waiting on player (name) to take their turn
Finalizing timers for each round based on player duration: Operator Creation — 1.5 Minutes, Agent Creation — 1 Minute, Agent Voting — 30 Seconds, Results Screen — 15 Seconds, Scoreboard — 10 Seconds
Option to quit during the game
Option to review the rules during the game
Add a default name if no name is shown up
Add a default clue if no clue is shown up
Display who hasn’t gone yet (optional)

We then moved on to implement these above features into our final version of the game!