P4: protecc — A game about sex & its potential effects
Team members: Alyssa Romanos, Jessica Chen, Tiffany Manuel
Game printables for the play-at-home version available here
This project is a continuation of the first project that we completed for CS 377G. After witnessing the fun that presented itself during our final P1 playtest, through exclamations such as
“You have back pain! Don’t complain.”
we knew that we wanted to return to protecc for P4 to further improve gameplay and polish our card design.
INITIAL IDEAS
At the conclusion of P1, we knew that the two main issues with protecc were its card design and card balance. Due to its twisted humor that results from the goal of the game being to collect the symptoms of an STD/STI, we were told by our instructor, Christina Wodtke, as well as our fellow classmates that we should create a cute and fun design to ensure that the irony and humor of the players’ goal is properly received.
Additionally, with the final playtest for P1, it was clear that the ratio of our different card types were off as players had to go through our deck three times before one of them finally won. We identified the main source of this issue to be the number of Prevention and Treatment Cards, which allowed players to keep one another from winning.
CARD DESIGN
When brainstorming designs for our cards, we immediately decided to go with a warmer color scheme as each member of our team associated the topic of STD/STIs with the color pink. However, unlike other health-related games we saw on the market, we didn’t want to portray the conditions in a cartoon-ish, colorful way, since this was a health topic more appropriate for older ages, and we wanted most of the humor to come from player interactions as opposed to the card design.
Because of that, we were inspired by the elegant card design displayed below. We adopted its use of a serif header font and a spaced-out, sans serif body font, deciding on Lora for headers and Cantarell for body text.
Finally, we resized our cards to match the size of regular playing cards, and adjusted the colors so they looked distinct enough but still had enough contrast.
During our playtest, participants also expressed that they wanted to know which symptoms corresponded to which STD/STI condition and suggested that we color-code the symptoms to match their condition. However, because we want our players to learn these relationships, we felt that color-coding would discourage players from reading the cards and simply rely on the colors to determine whether or not they have collected a winning set.
During our final playtest for P1, we felt that we had achieved our learning goal due to the fact that players were forced to read their cards to determine their winning status and also memorized the different relationships between symptoms and conditions as a strategy to keep other players from winning. Therefore, we refrained from color-coding our symptoms and conditions, but introduced reference cards so that players could this desired information available.
PROCESS
CARD BALANCE: VERSION #1
In our final P1 version of the game, we had 3 conditions with 2 symptoms each (6 symptoms total) and 1 treatment each (3 treatments total) as well as 3 different types of prevention and 4 different actions. Therefore, our numbers were as follows:
- 3 Condition Cards/condition (9)
- 3 Symptom Cards/symptom (18)
- 2 Treatment Cards/treatment (6)
- 3 Prevention Cards/prevention (9)
- 3 Action Cards/action (12)
Overall, the main game mechanics from P1 were a hit amongst our playtest groups, and in particular we heard a lot of fun noises during our last playtest in class. Our biggest area for improvement was game balance, especially in regards to the card ratios in our deck.
But before making any changes to the ratios, we knew that we wanted to include more conditions into our game for learning’s sake, since our final version from P1 only contained 3. Considering the timeline for P4 we felt that doubling the number of conditions, resulting in 6 conditions total, was the best option given that we wanted to dedicate more time to playtesting and iterating on our new card balance. In addition, during our last playtest in class, we notes that our group ended up reusing the deck multiple times because the gameplay went faster than we expected.
Summary:
- ✅ Main game mechanics
- ⚠️ Card ratios
- ⚠️ Card numbers
CARD BALANCE: VERSION #2 + PLAYTESTING
As stated previously, we recognized that the imbalance was in the number of Prevention and Treatment Cards in relation to the total number of Condition and Symptom Cards. In addition, we realized that there was one too many Prevention Cards, making the game last a little longer than desired, resulting in the deck being reshuffled multiple times.
Therefore, with respect to the switch to 6 conditions and removing 1 prevention, our numbers for our first iteration of P4 are as follows:
- 2 Condition Cards/condition (12)
- 3 Symptom Cards/symptom (36)
- 1 Treatment Card/treatment (6)
- 2 Prevention Cards/prevention (6)
- 3 Action Cards/action (12)
Despite the chaos that ensued towards the end of P4, we were able to hold a playtesting session with volunteers Ryan, Thomas, and Pete to test our new card balance. To witness all of the fun sounds yourself, you can watch our playtesting session here.
In this playtest, our participants were able to play two rounds of the game. After the first round, participants commented that they wish that they had more treatments. However, we were unsure whether this was the result of our deck not being shuffled well or because the proportion of Treatment Cards was actually too low, so our participants decided to play again, for science.
Following the second round of the game, participants once again stated that they would like to have more Treatment Cards, especially because each of their games were relatively short (the first game lasted for roughly 11 minutes and the second one for roughly 6 minutes). After watching the playtest ourselves, we agreed that we needed to increase the number of Treatment Cards, particularly because we noticed that decreasing the number of Treatment Cards meant that the most exciting part of the game (playing a Treatment Card to prevent someone from winning) would occur less often.
Players also noted that the best strategy seemed to be playing as many Symptom Cards as possible, and Action Cards felt underutilized. In addition, there were small issues brought up with some of the card contents.
“You stole my symptom!”
“I play gonorrhea!” “You’re a goner.”
Playtest summary:
- ✅ Players enjoyed the game and thought it flowed nicely
- ✅ Didn’t have to reshuffle the deck too many times
- ⚠️ Players won games too quickly ➡️ Increase Treatment Cards, Change winning game condition to not just 1 winning set
- ⚠️ Action Cards weren’t played much, especially “Discard until 5” since players’ hands remained the same size throughout the game ➡️ Change to “Discard until 2 (Played Symptom Cards)”, increase Action Card ratio
CARD BALANCE: VERSION #3 + MORE PLAYTESTING
As a result of the feedback we received during both rounds of playtesting, we changed our card numbers to be as follows:
- 2 Condition Cards/condition (12)
- 3 Symptom Cards/symptom (36)
- 2 Treatment Card/treatment (12)
- 4 Prevention Cards/prevention (8)*
- 3 Action Cards/action (12)
- Note: We eliminated 1 type of prevention, resulting in only 2 types of prevention and also decided to slightly increase the total number of Prevention Cards to balance the larger increase in Treatment Cards (since Prevention Cards can stop the play of Treatment Cards).
In addition, we adjusted our cards based on the playtest feedback, and changed the winning game condition to be 3 winning sets of Condition+Symptom Cards, in order to extend the average game length and potential for learning.
In this playtest, we also finalized our cards, and introduced a design for the back & game logo.
Unfortunately, due to circumstances that resulted in us having to leave campus sooner than expected, we were unable to get a full playtest in with our new card balance. However, we were able to do a partial, internal playtest, which gave us enough confidence in this iteration’s card balance. Based off the cards we saw & played with in our playtest, we feel happy with our current ratios and have high hopes that it results in a decent game duration (20–25 minutes) while also frequently infusing the exciting moments of players playing Treatment and Prevention Cards on one another throughout the game.
FINALIZED DECK
CONCLUSION
Overall, we had a great time improving upon our P1. This was a topic all group members were excited about, and we’re definitely satisfied of the final product.
Of course we wish we had more time to conduct additional playtests, but we’re proud of how much we accomplished in the short period given to us at the end of the quarter. However, we wish we were able to achieve a more confident conclusion, so if you download our play-at-home version, please record yourself playing the game and leave a link to it below!
