The final steps

Everything appears to be coming together on our final steps of development. The rules have been finalized and design ideas have been, for the most part, brought to the table.


Our prototype proved to be a success. During the playtesting day, I noticed that most groups played their respective games for a set amount of time before they started writing on the comment sheet. The group that played Supernova ended up playing longest out of all the groups. From what I examined, they displayed all the actions and physical reactions my group expected to find within a test-audience. They responded with excitement, laughter, disgust, and amazement. In fact, some of their faces turned bright red from laughing so hard. These reactions are exactly what we as a group hoped for. In the final steps towards polishing our game, we wish to implement the suggestions brought forth to us.

Soon enough, Supernova will be unleashed.

Finalized Cards!

SUPERWRITING!!!!

So far it has been difficult to come up with the needed ideas for all the cards. This is very important because it is, in essence, the "guts" of our game. We have set a pretty ambitious goal of around 200 cards and that's proving to be a substantial amount of writing. It seems to be especially difficult for us in a few more limited categories such as "Physical Feats". How can we come up with 40+ different physical feats? How can we come up with that number while avoiding anything that causes players to kill themselves? How far are we willing to push our players? Where should the lines be drawn while keeping in mind the teen and older demographic and basic culturally acceptable ideals of taste? Stay tuned to find out the answers to the questions and more on Supernova...the blog...

Playtesting

For this week's class, we had to bring in a prototype of SUPERNOVA. This class gave us a chance to have others play test our board game. The group that played our game reported some criticism, but overall we had done a great job. One problem that we encountered was with our random rule cards. Our playtesters didn't like the fact that the duration of the rule cards lasted the whole game. We decided to cut the time to either three turns or throughout one level of the game. We also had some playing pieces that made our game too similar to Trivial Pursuit. We decided to work on coming up with a different star puzzle. Our idea was to get wooden star pieces and use Velcro to stick it together. It's going to be interesting to see how our final product turns out!

Card Design

This is the card design for the game.

One step closer..

Our group has made significant progress in terms of the creation of cards within the game. Since the content of the cards is essential to success, we sought to focus on solidifying our cards categories and content. We each came into class prepared with drafts of each category of cards. We discussed how we will go about creating the cards, the star piece container, and the actual board. A significant portion of the period was spent creating the set of rules. The weakness of our last two games lied within the presentation and rule clarity. We focused on the coherence and effectiveness of the rules. Professor Goeller returned our previous game to give us inspiration. We took many aspects of Sibling Rivalry and incorporated them into our new game. This includes the cards and the general feel of the game. We also managed to complete a new design for the cover of the cards, assign tasks for each person to complete by next period, and discussed ideas for the commercial.

Game Layout [TAKE2]

Here's an updated version of the game layout.

Day 2

On our second day of collaboration, we sought to create a tentative set of general rules. In the process, we outlined our general game very quickly. The structure and layout of the game is fairly simple. The game board consists of a multilayered star. The point of the game is to move towards the center of the star, progressing through the different layers. To jump from one layer of the star to the next layer, one must complete their Star Puzzle. The winner of the game is whoever gets to the center of the star first. More specific details about the rules can be found at http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dfw87fjf_6dfmx4md7

The idea behind the Star Puzzle is to create a means of strategy. These star pieces are valuable in terms of the gameplay so the players will naturally be involved with deception, alliances, bartering, and luck. This idea went through some design challenges. Our dilemma lies in the fact that we have two ideas for the Star puzzle. One is a design is harder to pull off and the other option is easier. The harder option is to make a puzzle out of hard material like plastic or wood. This puzzle will then be split into equal "puzzle pieces" in which you must collect to create the whole. The easier option is to create a star shaped container that holds 5 gems, one gem for each point of the star. Here are some sketches made during the class period.


Freehand drawing a star is no easy task. Pedro still managed to make a stellar star!


Here were some designs for Star Piece containers. On the left was a design for foldable flaps that extend from the main gameboard. On the right are designs for the gem containers that were described earlier.

Game Layout

Hey everyone, I just wanted to post up the layout of our game that we did today in class. Any comments or suggestions, just let me know!

-- Jane

First Day Brainstorm

Overall, the first day proved to be very productive. Each individual within the group proved that he or she has a talent or skill that could be brought forth within this upcoming project. As a group, we realized the positive and negative aspects of our last two games. We agreed to essentially take the positive aspects of our last 2 games and incorporate them into our final project.


Here were the pros and cons of the two games in a brief summary.

BattleBoard
Pros
-Unique utilization of accessory pieces
-Dense and complex gameplay
-Aesthetically pleasing box
Cons
-Too complicated for average player
-Not a "Pick up and Play" game
-Limited playing demographic

In summary, this game has potential in only a specific audience of players. We most probably will not take many of this game's attributes into our next game. However, we are brainstorming a "puzzle piece progression system" in our new prototype that is similar to the use of "Energy Crystals" in BattleBoard. Within this system, each player will have an item of some sort (perhaps a container with the shape of a star), and throughout the game the player will have to collect the puzzle pieces that fit into the shape. This system offers the players a means of tracking who is winning. This "puzzle piece" system provides a more interesting means of tracking progression than the standard point system.

Also, we have brainstormed ways we could incorporate the elements of economy, deception, luck, and strategy within this "puzzle piece" system.

Sibling Rivalry
Pros
-"Pick up and Play"
-Colorful and vibrant
-Very easy and intuitive gameplay
-Gameplay that appeals to a wide variety of people
-Provoked comical and entertaining scenarios
-Provided glimpses of nostalgia for older teens
-Really Fun
Cons
-Although most audiences could play, the overall appearance may appear too childish for some
-The game is limited to the quality and quantity of the cards.
-Limited use of strategy and critical thinking


During our brainstorming session, we decided on a symbol that we are going to base our game on. This symbol is the Star. Naturally, our game will boast an outer space theme. Our goal is to make a game that is similar to Sibling Rivalry, but brought to the next level. We are incorporating more variety in the cards. We also want more "out of your chair" action.

We went through Amazon.com and randomly scrolled through boardgames. Once in a while we would comment on the quality of some of the games that caught our eye. We were even influenced by some of these games.



The pursuit of a name to our game proved to be a fun task. Some ideas were "JabbaWockees" (that is a name of a Dance crew so we couldn't use it), and "Ja-Su-Marii" (the combination of our names, but the group felt it sounded too much like my name). For inspiration, we even clicked the random article button on Wikipedia to find random words. We settled on the name "Supernova". It worked for our theme and 3 out of the 4 people in the group liked the name.

Jane drew out the layout of our boardgame on Photoshop.

We had a lot of fun and made a lot of progress in such a short amount of time (as evidenced in these photos)








Jane working on layout of game.













Pedro gets inspired by his research.









Mike diligently ponders about exciting
game elements.










John holding one of the symbols of Sibling Rivalry that inspired our
new game.

Supernova!

The Game That Makes You Explode Out Of Your Seats!