Reflection #3

I wanted to try something different for this design challenge, so I decided to try making a physical game instead of a digital game. I’ve played a lot of different board games as a child, but I had never really thought of creating my own until starting up this challenge. I was inspired by some games on tabletop simulator where the movement of the player is often manipulated by more than just the dice rolls, and other external factors played into the environment as well. I wanted to revolve the game around duel cards that would put one player against another to advance their teams forward as a sort of tournament match-up like in a sports game.

While I didn’t get to playtest this much, I did realize quickly that the game board should be resized. The cards do manipulate player movement enough that low rolls in combination with certain cards made it possible to keep the game going, it wasn’t long before players with higher rolls made it to the other side of the board too quickly. Without making a second version of the board, I decided to have the game go on for several laps as a sort of relay race so it is necessary to go from the beginning and end of the board multiple times in order to win. This meant cards that sent the players back several spaces while at the beginning would undo their completed laps and prolong the game for more opportunities to duel and utilize wild cards and field effects. Players tended to enjoy the duel cards and the ones where the color of the space you landed on would change the outcome of where you land on the gameboard as well. Overall, I think the experience would benefit from more duel cards for better variety and a broader set of wild cards and field effects to give duels extra effects and a more interesting spin on the game.