Reflection #1 Duke Book Mind Power
For the Game Design Challenge I selected the Prompt “Duke Book Mind Power”, and I used the ideas the prompt gave me to design a competitive three person card game as my game prototype. The game, currently untitled although I just refer to it by its prompt, is a card game that places players in the roles of three telepathic Dukes embroiled in a heavy rivalry as they face off in battles using their mental powers. The central idea for the game was how it was split into two separate halves, the first half is referred to as the Learning Phase and is based around all of the players building their respective Duke’s abilities and preparing them for the fights with the other Dukes. The second half was ultimately going to be an action/fighting phase where the Dukes would face off in several one on one fights, the Duke with the most wins would be determined as the victor of the game. There is more detail with the different kinds of cards and the three separate types but that doesn’t need to be gotten into for the reflection.
While due to the physical nature of the game I was not currently able to get people together for a legitimate testing session I was able to have a conversation with others about my game and to talk with them about the concepts and mechanics behind it. The response of the people I talked two was largely positive, they either liked the ideas behind them or could see how they could work in a different way. Although one of the people I talked to wasn't very interested in the game for generally personal reasons of it not being the kind of card game they’d like to play, the other two enjoyed the concepts and thought it sounded fun.
The rules side of things was somewhat confusing to some of the people I talked with. While not being overly complex the usage of different card types and certain aspects of each Duke did require more detailed explanation that I had expected when designing the prototype. Like the game was simple to me but, the video I sent to Professor DiMatteo ended up totaling over ten straight minutes of just me explaining the rules of the game and how to play.
I can’t talk about if the people had fun or if they did anything surprising as I could not run a physical game with people at this present time. However the way the game is split into a preparation phase with how well players do in the second phase being determined by their preparation was something that stood out as interesting to most of the people I talked two. Another thing some of my focus group thought was interesting how certain players could focus more on certain types of cards to be successful and how each player could have a good reason for picking each duke.
One thing the testers talked about as possibly being an issue is with the special cards. In the game there are 6 special cards, two for each card type, and these cards can only be gotten by random selection. Because they were rare, they were designed to be superior to the normal cards and therefore be stronger than them. This was mentioned as possibly being too overpowered as one of the cards can multiply the player’s passive defense value by two which could vastly surpass the other players if they have the right cards, or one card that weakens the other player, slightly for the rest of the game. While they were supposed to be a little overpowered, some of these cards might have been too strong and might be unfair to the other players.
If I was ever going to flesh out this game more and make some changes on it. One of the things I would do is to increase the amount of cards available for players, so as to not have every card be used each game, this might help with the special cards as there will be a possibility of not every player having two of them each game. I could also find new ways to avoid ties as I feel the current tie breaker scenarios aren’t the best and only serve to work in the event of a tie but the game works far better when ties don't occur.
I could also even radically change the game either by adding bidding features where players bid for certain powers, include deeper minigames or aspects of character development, or even base the game around moving around a larger board where players travel around in phase 1 to develop and learn new powers and use more complex tactical elements to phase 2 with distance and direction being involved with a longer three way fight for the winner.
The conversations I had helped me look at more of the flaws of my prototype and helped me brainstorm ways I could fix it, and even led to me thinking of deeper more complex ways to change the game while still keeping in with the original concept for it.
