Wednesday, March 5, 2008

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.









1 comment:

Jane said...

we are so cute!!!!! LOL