Communication Design

Final Project ( I am The Bluff)

Game Card Design 

Game Card Design

I’ve taken the user’s comments into consideration and made some changes. I’ve made the colours light, but I feel it doesn’t fit in with the theme, so i changed some elements to black. Now it fits in more with the theme, but I’m not sure if there is too much contrast or not. 

Game Card Design

This is my first card design. 

Playtest 6

Tested with 2 players: played 5 times. Changes were made during each round.

We played with the same game guide as the last one, but with the tiny changes that needed to be made. The Game Guide above is the result we got after testing. I believe I am getting close to the final result, as it was fun to play. 

After 2 rounds:  What do you think needs changing in the game? Can’t think of anything at the moment, need to play more and get used to the skills.

Playtest 5

Tested with 2 players. Played 3 times. 

Changes to be made - You’re under arrest is useless at the moment, needs to be altered.  - Should skill deduction be a thing?  - Reword Goverment ability, hard to understand - The Worker appears useless against the government Playtester’s opinions:

Professional Engagement #NZGDC2016 (New Zealand Game Developers Conference)

I was lucky to be able to attend the NZGDC, I would like to thank Ben Kenobi, for recommending me to attend and giving me the opportunity to attend. It was a wonderful 2 day experience, 1 day to enjoy the conferences and 1 day volunteering. This was a paid event, but I got one day free for volunteering. I got too see a lot of wonderful presentations, and got to meet a lot of new people, and made new friends. One unfortunate thing was that my sickness got worse as I was volunteering, fever got to me, so I had to stay home for the next few days, putting me a bit more behind on my work schedule.  

There was some amazing speakers and talks that really helped and inspired me. There was one presenter who did a talk on “ UI/UX 101 for Indies: How to push your buttons ”, her talk had some useful tips as she speaks about some bad UI/UX design out there. One quote I really like from her is “Good design is actually a lot harder to notice than poor design, in part because good design fits our needs so well that the design becomes invisible.” because I find this to be very true. 

I also got to meet a game board developer from Cheeky Parrot (Lucy Morris). It was really interesting to hear what she had to say about game board packaging design. She mentions that games that are easier to pronounce, and packaging that shows what the game is about is more effective and get sold more. I asked her what advice she can give me on play testing and she suggested to go to some of these places where the community can help me play test, Board Game by the bay, Cakes and Ladders, King of cards. She also gave me the advice that adding design will often distract the players from the actual game play.

On Friday when I was volunteering, I was lucky enough to be assigned to level 9 where a Analog Game Design Workshop was happening. I got to see the process they did to come up with quick game designs and was able to join in on some of the play testing. For one of the game that I helped play test with, we had to hold our arms like T-Rexs, and had to keep them there as we collect our assigned coloured paper and put them in our box. We had to roar every time we got something in. Another game that I was involved in was a bluffing game, coincidence or what? The theme for their bluffing game was that we were space monkeys and we are trying to crack a code, each of the monkey has apart of the code, the catch is that there are sabotor monkeys who are trying to sabotage us to fail the code. 

As I was designing a new iteration of my game. I came up with a new play style and came up with a name for my game. Because my game requires the player to state what they are and what they are doing each turn saying things like “I am The Government, and I’m taxing you”, I think it would be cool to use this phrase in the name. To help me design the game and help me make it more immersive, I’ve decided to add a story and personality to the game. 

To not waste too much time, I’ve decided to start designing the visuals, while finding play testers. It could also be nice to play test the game mechanics and game visuals at the same time, killing 2 birds with 1 stone. Hopefully they don’t interfere with each other too much. 

Looking at the existing designs for bluffing, you can see a similarity of dark colours being used, the characters also have a serious and mysterious expressions. For me looking at these characters really help me get into character, into the “magic circle” and the serious expressions creates suspense. I believe it is ideal to create characters like this for bluffing games, I want to create my own characters with a similar style merged with the playing cards style. I like how playing cards are usable in 2 different orientation.

If I have time, I would like to experience how imagery affect the game. I would like to try bright and happy characters, or maybe no characters at all. I am not good at illustration people, so this will be a challenge to me. 

I had a interview with my tutor from Game and Play design, Ben Kenobi. We play tested the game, which was still at the same stage as the previous play test. I told him the game was unbalanced and he told me that we needed to continue playing and see if that would still be the case later in the game. He gave me advice to simplify it down, as there was too much stuff going on. The game require us to remember what the opponent was, figure out what their goal is, and remember what we said, and what goal we are going for. He suggest testing with only 3 roles and possibly try 3 different currency. 

PLAY TEST 3

New iteration. Play test with 5 players. 

Discoveries

PLAYTEST 2

With the information I’ve gathered from play test 1, i have made a new iteration. This time I’ve play tested this with 4 people. Here is the information I’ve gather from this test.