The aim of the game was to eliminate other players, movement was implemented through a series of cards, which included: Move (in the current facing direction three spaces), Turn and move (only by one angle, in either direction and move 3 spaces), Turn (in any of the six available directions) and Fire, (fires in the current direction, eliminating players on that path). Each player would decide their move, and lay the appropriate card simultaneous to the other players laying their chosen cards, the moves would then be carried out in the same order as written above.
The problem we found with this game is that it could go on for a long time, when it got down to just two players, they would constantly try to out manouvre each other but with no prevail, this would continue until one player would purposely lose so the game could be reset, and the other players who are out join in again.
The iterations we made to the game included:
Walls The walls in the game were simply clusters of shaded hexes, which provided obstacles that could not be crossed or shot through, they would also act as cover that could be used for more tactical play, unfortunately the walls had little effect on the game, especially if a player tried to use the walls as cover, as it would slow down the game, and not necessarily give an advantage to the player.
Portals The portals on the board were simply a few hexes spread across the board with a spiral symbol on, these could be used to teleport to any other portal, when entered by a player. This had a mild affect on the game as on a few occasions a player could warp to a position behind another player, which would give an advantage, but this worked well rarely.
Turn and fire card The turn and fire card was implemented as we found that on many occasions players were faced with a situation where if they were able to turn and fire they would be able to eliminate a player. We decided to have this card as a one use only, which in hindsight may not have been the best choice, as it was a card designed to speed up the game play and tactics, once it was used it was not regain-able.
Sprint card The sprint card allowed a player to move up to six hexes, in one turn, again like the turn and fire card this was one use only, so didn't help to speed up the game much. With both of these added cards we should have implemented a way to regain the ability, possibly by collecting tokens from points on the board, or simply by a regeneration over a number of goes (although the latter would be harder to keep track of)
Overall I think are iterations were not very affective but, were close to improving the game if they had been tweaked slightly. Even if they had been I think the game would still be lacking something, I felt it needed a different objective as the 'eliminate the other players' objective, seemed to make for a very simple game that would rapidly get boring for the players, perhaps introducing a capture the flag or king of the hill objective would have worked better for this game and should have been what we implemented, rather than implementing different tools to improve a game with a poor objective.
Monday 29 November 2010
Battle Ships Iterations
Iterations to battle ships included:
A 'cross' explosion like the explosions, in 'bomberman', this advantage would only occur if a player managed to destroy an enemy ship without missing since the first hit, from then the explosion would cross from the point of the last hit, both vertically and horizontally, covering one complete row, and one complete column. Although the idea seems quite reasonable, achieving this bonus was rather hard, as destroying a ship outright with no misses is not such a common occurrence in the game, however what it did help to add to the game is more strategy in the placing of the ships, since the last hit part of the ship could potentially cause another ship to be hit through the after explosion. Unfortunately the bonus was only achieved once throughout the games we played, and then no ships were hit. I think this iteration would have been more successful if it had occurred, after any ship was destroyed, regardless of misses, or even the effect only happens on certain types of pre defined ships, or perhaps the player has one of these to cash in on the last square hit of any ship, the possibilities go on.
Mines, two of which have to be placed by each player on their own board, (amongst their own ships) mines when hit by the other player, would cause an explosion 1 square thick around the point of the mine, creating a 3x3 blast area in total, hitting a mine would also mean the player whose mine was hit would miss their next turn. Again the same problem occurred, in that these were not very often hit, although it was hit in one game, it had very little impact to the play of the game.
A 'cross' explosion like the explosions, in 'bomberman', this advantage would only occur if a player managed to destroy an enemy ship without missing since the first hit, from then the explosion would cross from the point of the last hit, both vertically and horizontally, covering one complete row, and one complete column. Although the idea seems quite reasonable, achieving this bonus was rather hard, as destroying a ship outright with no misses is not such a common occurrence in the game, however what it did help to add to the game is more strategy in the placing of the ships, since the last hit part of the ship could potentially cause another ship to be hit through the after explosion. Unfortunately the bonus was only achieved once throughout the games we played, and then no ships were hit. I think this iteration would have been more successful if it had occurred, after any ship was destroyed, regardless of misses, or even the effect only happens on certain types of pre defined ships, or perhaps the player has one of these to cash in on the last square hit of any ship, the possibilities go on.
Mines, two of which have to be placed by each player on their own board, (amongst their own ships) mines when hit by the other player, would cause an explosion 1 square thick around the point of the mine, creating a 3x3 blast area in total, hitting a mine would also mean the player whose mine was hit would miss their next turn. Again the same problem occurred, in that these were not very often hit, although it was hit in one game, it had very little impact to the play of the game.
New Games Journalism
I read a new games journalism article titled; Bow Nigger, I found the article quite interesting to read, and felt that I could link some of the experiences mentioned in the article about the online world of the game and encounters with different players within the walls of the game world, not to the same game, but to other online games. I enjoyed reading the article, and I think it told the story of the experience very well, however as an article based on a game, it contained very little facts about the actual game, there were little chunks of information about the game and some of its mechanics mixed in with the story of the experience, but not enough to know the game well, without having to play it. Despite the lack of detail about the game itself, I found whilst reading I was able to form a simple idea of what the game was like, and I enjoyed reading it as an insight to a players experience within the game, rather than a more traditional games article, which would have been more based on the game itself rather than on a meaningful experience within the game. In summary, I enjoyed reading the article and accept it as a story of a players experience within the game, instead of a review of the game, its not the sort of thing I would want to read if I was looking at potentially purchasing the game.
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