#paper prototype

It is getting close to the end of my 1st year studying Game Design & Production at AIE, and that means final year group project! Making a game together with another designer, artists, and programmers.

Although we are close to our alpha milestone, it was suggested to me that we should do some paper prototyping. One day, two teddy bears, and a few toy soldiers later...

UCF Celebrates the Arts 2017

An eight-day festival celebrating the performing and visual arts.

In my Game Design class in Fall 2016 we created a paper prototype of Mario Kart 64. We basically had to take a digital game and make it into a board game. This project is one of my all time favorites and my group was able to showcase it along with our Casual Production game, “Road Trip Breakdown” at the UCF Celebrates the Arts Festival! 

We were introduced to the idea of paper prototyping.

We began creating a board game following simple guidelines, then eventually either adding or removing features to create our own game. 

Game Description:

Each player has their own set of 24 pieces set to each side of the board, along with 6 extra to spare, but they’re in the discard pile. In a world of gambling, 2 players test their luck to see which rule/minigame they will have to play next as they draw the next card. Each player needs to try to keep as many pieces on the board for as long as they can as they draw the cards. Once they draw a card, the number/value will determine whether they need to discard, give up their pieces to the other player, or gain some pieces. The game ends when one player loses all their pieces, leaving the other player to win.

Session 1: Me (NW) vs Noah Jones (NJ)

As we played through the game, my and my partner thought there were too many rules that causes us to lose pieces. So, we decided to switch up the rules a bit, especially changing the rule for the queen, because just being able to get another turn felt a little boring to us, especially for a Queen card, which is meant to be something more special. We even changed up the Ace to be on a 50/50 so that the game can be a little less brutal to the players. However, adding these factors did make the play time a lot longer. In the end, I won the game.

Session 2: Playing against classmates

In this session, I was in a group of 3, so I decided to let the other 2 players play the game as I observe them. As they played through the game, they didn't like the fact that certain rules were meant to last throughout the game, such as the rule with the number 5 card, where players couldn't say a certain rule. So, as they played, I changed up that rule so that when 1 player breaks the rule, then the rule doesn't apply anymore. They thought of the rule to be super annoying, though the challenge of remembering all of these rules was my original intent for the game. With this rule change, it did make the game go by much slower than it should have. The game ended up being cut short since we didn't have enough time to play during class.

Session 3: Playing with a friend, Giselle

Outside of class, I had one of my friends, Giselle, play this game with me. I explained a lot of the rules for her. She didn't have a lot of feedback for me, but after making some of the changes from previous feedback that I made, the game lasted for over 30+ min. However, she did like some of the changes that I made once I explained how the rules were like before. She didn't think she would have had the mental capacity to remember all of those rules at one time. I think I would have to add in some mechanics to make the game shorter, for those who would want to play a shorter board game. I ended up winning the game.

Core Mechanics:

Players each roll die to determine who goes 1st

Draw 1 card.

Follow the rules as said on the side of the board game.

Rules: based on the number/value tells whether you lose/gain pieces, or the players would have to play through a minigame to determine whether they win or lose pieces.

Ace: Roll a dice, if even lose half your pieces (round up)

2: Gain 3 pieces

3: Lose 2 pieces

4: Lose 3 pieces

5: You can't speak a specific word, the player gets to choose it. If said, lose 1 piece.

6: Both players lose a piece.

7: Steal a piece from the enemy's board.

8: The player says a word and the next player needs to say a word that rhymes. This continues until one player runs out, they lose 2 pieces

9: The player picks a category and other players continue to say words of that category, if one runs out, lose 2 pieces. 

10: Start by saying 10, the next player can say a number 1 or 2 lower, keep going until someone says 0 or below, they lose 2 pieces.

J: Play never have I ever: If a player A (the one drawing the card) speaks about an event that they did that player B has also done, player A loses 1 piece. If player A says an event that player B hasn't done, player B loses 1 piece. 

Q: When finishing a sentence, the player picks a word/phrase to end. If one player runs out of words to rhyme, they lose a piece. 

K: Both players add 1 piece. 

Paper Prototyping is a fun stage, as I get to sketch, iterate multiple layouts and designs and brainstorm ideas for the UI. What's, and I love the "idea of crazy 8". It's quick, fun and intuitive.

Rules for crazy 8 are simple: sketch possible UI ideas by making 8 illustrations within 8 minutes in 8 boxes. The paper is divided into 8 segments, each of which is an individual screen with one minute for each box.

This seems competitive, but it's not a test; it's a way to put out ideas on paper and push our limits. The rules are simple, but I could never complete on time, as I kept drafting idea after idea, and it works for me that way. Haha!

The next stage was to pick ideas in parts from the 8 sketches that are ideal and work best. Then draft a unified single layout that works best.

After the primary illustration, I made another scroll-down version for he homepage in the elongated sketch. This will be my pilot page, and the rest are transition pages.

As I didn't want to overly complicate, I kept the page count to 3. The home page is the pilot page, and account and vehicle details are transition pages. The secondary page will hold data such as the user's profile, documents and vehicle data.

Reyes and Tupaz paper prototype