#board game dev

The goal today was to make a game from start to finish, the theme of which was given to us in a soundbite of a beating heart.

Games Rules:

Each player starts off the game with one Profession, one Location and one activity each card displayed face up

A game consists of two rounds, split up into 3 turns

At the start of a turn an evidence card is placed

Players, based on the evidence, accuse each other of being the murderer & defend against the accusations of others for the duration of a turn

A turn lasts 30 seconds

On the completion of a round players draw another location & activity card as well as passing out one of the accusation tokens to the player they think is the murderer

After the completion of two rounds the player with the most accusation tokens is declared the loser

To make the game you need the following pieces:

2 x Accusation Tokens per player

Profession Cards:

1x Doctor Card 1x Butler Card 1x Gardener Card 1x Handyman Card 1x Housecleaner Card 1x Colonel Card 1x Chef Card 1x Detective Card

Activity Cards:

2x Cleaning Cards 1x Training Card 1x Practising Card 2x Working Card 1x Inspecting Card 2x Talking Cards 1x Cooking Card 1x Sitting Card 2x Eating Cards 1x Reading Card 1x Sleeping Card

Location Cards:

2x Bathroom Cards 2x Kitchen Cards 2x Backyard Cards 2x Study Cards 2x Attic Cards 2x Basement Cards 2x Bedroom Cards 2x Dining room Cards

Evidence Cards:

1x Occult Ravings Heard Card 1x Found a Noose Card 1x Victim's Wallet was Stolen Card 1x Blood Found in Bedroom Card 1x Victim’s Shoes Were Missing Card 1x Cut on Victim’s Face Card  1x Victim has Dirty and Torn Cloths Card 1x Muddy Footsteps in Kitchen Card 1x Knife Hidden in the Backyard Card 1x Victim Found with Sandwich in Hand Card 1x Bathroom Flooded Card 1x Shovel Found in Bathroom Card 1x Bloodied Knife Card

Personal Experience:

I am a great fan of game jams of any type and the experience of doing one within a group for the first time was great. After a bit of a rocky start we got got started play testing which, as usual, caused us to see firsthand that a lot of our initial ideas wouldn’t work and that we had missed out big chunks of the game.

Each play test saw quite a large change each time, stripping out a dedicated detective for each turn, then later playing with a way to put that back in, removing dedicated you are the murderer cards in favor of letting the players decide who was the murderer through arguments.

The biggest thing that I learnt though was that play testing a game that requires high energy from the players drained a lot of energy from the group by the end of the session and that the game itself suffered greatly from players that were not fully invested with accusing others.

But At the end of the day I am happy with what our group came up with, even though it requires a little bit more work on how the players win