Lab Assignment 1 (Jan 6th)
Title of Game: 7 UP 7 D0WN
Group members: Denisa Patron Vivien Hung, Aubrey Garcia
The goal of 7 UP 7 DOWN is to get rid of all the cards in your deck. (Point A: Having a full deck. Point B: No longer holding any cards)
Each person receives 7 cards from the deck
Each turn, someone must roll the die to see if the turn will be determined by odd or even. Odd means only odd card numbers must be played, and an even card means only even numbers must be played. If the die lands on an even number (2, 4, 6), the play of the game is even. If odd (1, 3, 6), the play of the game is odd. In this game, Jack is 13, Queen is 14, King is 15 and Ace is 1.
Each player places ONE card face down, at the same time. Once everyone has placed down their card, they will reveal at the same time.
Whoever played the highest odd/even card can drop an extra card (to get rid of more cards in hand). If cards of the same number are played, then the card with the higher suit wins (diamonds < clubs < hearts < spades).
Whoever plays the lowest card must pick up a card from the deck.
Repeat from step 2 until someone has no more cards. The one with no more cards is the winner.
When prototyping our game, we encountered many problems. We found ways to fix them to make the game more enjoyable.
Bugs in initial prototype:
Rolling to decide the order of play did NOT work, everyone got confused.
Number of cards given was too many (Originally the number was 12)
People who weren’t able to play a card (due to not having an even card when it was odd card play) didn’t know what to do
Seeing what other people played changed the competition aspect of the game
Patches for latest prototype:
No more deciding who goes first, everyone plays their card face down then reveals their card at the same time.
Added rule of loser picking up a card.
The game I play-tested did not have a name when we first played it, but the rules were simple and pretty fun. I enjoyed their game a lot, the rules of the game felt very new and original to me.
What I recall from the game was that you start off with 0 cards, and the goal is to have 5 cards in your hand. The rules were very simple, you first must draw a card. Then you could either skip your turn, or play a card. There is a hierarchy to the game, and if you play a high card, other player must put down a card that is lower than the card played. For example, if you play a Jack, everyone must place a card lower than that down (From 10->Ace). So it’s best when you are able to get high cards. The game was confusing at first because we, the players, were confused as to how drawing/skipping a turn worked, and if it was by round. Did we all pick up a card at the same time, then sequentially place down/skip our turn?
We needed quite of a bit of clarification with the rules, but once things were cleared up, the game was very enjoyable, although it did end pretty quickly because the goal is to get only 5 cards. Other players did not notice someone had more than three cards, and everyone is trying to hoard as many cards as they can rather than play cards, which lead to the quick win. When we discussed this with the group who created the game, they said during their playthrough, they almost went through the whole deck of cards before someone won. They said it really just depends on you, the player, being aware of how many cards is in each persons hand. I really enjoyed the game, I do wish I got to play with it a little bit longer so I could have a better grasp of it. We were still able to give some feedback on clarifying the rules of the game.
