Reflection #3: The Lesser of Two Evils

The game that I created for the third design challenge is a physical card party game titled, The Lesser of Two Evils. Inspired by my previous design challenge, the game involves four to six players where two of them take on the roles of “presidential candidates” that are debating each for the chance to be made president while the rest of the players are tasked with becoming the “election panel”. The game goes on for four rounds with the panel members drawing one topic card for each that they must read to the candidates to which the two debaters must then on the spot, each must explain for two minutes about their perspective on the topic or slander their opponent in order to gain the favor of the panel. Each round the panel grants 1 point to the debater they believe is the winner and whoever has the most points are declared the winner. I developed this game due to one aspect of my previous game, You’re Hired, where players often slandered each other while trying to sell themselves to the “boss” player. Positive feedback from the those previous playtesting experiences led to me designing a game that was more topical and encouraged more slandering due to how the game is framed as a presidential debate. The group of players that helped me playtest this project had a great time and gave a healthy amount of feedback. They enjoyed how the random topics given from the panel offer a lot of leeway for players to improve what kind of hilarious “president” they would behave as. What I noticed in these sessions was that the game encouraged those who were selected as presidents to be role play as presidents with their own ridiculous backstories that were made quickly on the spot. One criticism that I heard and kept in mind was when there were a few times where two presidents received the equal number of points to where the game ended in a stalemate. The players recommended that there should be a concrete way to break stalemates like this when they occur. Overall, I learned that I should redesign the rounds and points given will prevent more stalemates and that the participants largely enjoyed the debating and improv that they can perform.