Play Test!

So far this is a good example of my game in the middle of play:

As you can see you have a variety of shapes you can make a path with, several items you have to connect your path too (the pink squares) and obstacles that prevent you from making an easy path to your end goal (a spot next to the big star). I have learned that this game is more enjoyable for people who like strategy. There are more items to think about that I thought because I personally like puzzles and strategy games. For those who don't...this game is not that fun. Honestly I don't think I'm going to change the difficulty because I do want to challenge people to think. 

Durring my "exit interviews" I have noticed that people would like to interact with the other player more. In the beginning you set up each other's obstacles (the brown rectangles and the grey hexagons), and even though it takes a while I have noticed that the players have enjoyed that the most. So far I know I will definitely I will be adding more obstacles. 

This is a form I had several people fill out after playing the game:

1. On a scale of 1-5 how fun was the game?

2. Which mechanic was your favorite? Which mechanic did you not enjoy?

3. Do you like the concept of being able to set up your opponent’s obstacles? If not, please explain.

4. Would you like more opportunities to interact with your opponent?

5. Did the game continuously keep your attention? When did you get bored?

#1 was obviously different from those who like thinking games, and those who just want to play a simple fun game. #2 was all about the obstacles, so I will continue to pay attention to the different options the players have with those. #3 was consistently a yes, even it it took a while. #4 was a yes as well, so I can tie that into more interaction with the obstacles durring game play, not just durring set up. #5 was a yes.

Modular House Aztec Style

For some time now we have been working on creating a game level in UDK. We have also been working on our modular house kits in maya, but I kept forgetting to take screen shots to post. Luckily now I have the three major chunks all in one post for you:

This is the beginning stage of the Modular House project. What was required was 3 - 128 unit walls (one plain, one with a door, and one with a window), a trim, and a roof. The only problem is that we did not take into account that the walls had to fit within a 128 BSP in UDK without z-fighting...so I decided to just copy all of my walls over and shorten them so that I only had to put a 1- unit trim at each corner, and bam no z-fighting. I also decided to make my door separate from it's handle so you could mix and match with the other kits just in case someone else did the same thing. I made an extra piece of decorative trim, and a connecting piece for the roof if someone wanted to put two roofs together and make them look like one continuous piece. 

Here are the final textures I choose for the walls. The first red texture I had looked like the fire from Super Mario...it was really bad. As for the current texture, the white and red are two different types of stucco, and you can see in the picture below that I threw in a little gold on the trim that is on the roof. 

This is the house when you put everything together in UDK with a nice afternoon light. Each corner piece, and the trim at the top can be disconnected and moved around, so I had a lot of fun seeing what I could do. 

Print and Play Concept Ideas

This is a crazy list of my inspiration foe a print an play, I added some graphics to help you follow my thought process:

1.Title: Your Path
2.you have to create your own custom path to win: 

3. The paths are made of squares connected at least by one side:

4. It is a race game to make it more simple.

5. The game board will be a rectangle

6. Each player gets their own game board, this way it is more personal, but you are still supposed to play this game with other people. 

7. Color Scheme: Ok, don't laugh at me, but I really like the colors on the label of my body wash ..so  Im planning on using a simular color scheme.

8. There is no time limit
9. I want to use dice to determine the number of spaces you can move on your path "tiles"
10.I want to take this chance to create orient-inspired icons. Here I have some inspirational photos I just pulled off the web while I was trying to think of my theme.

11. Do not want cards as a part of the game, but to display the rules with simple graphics:

12. You can rotate the pieces any way you want to fit the board, you just cannot flip them.

13.The obstacles on the board would look like this:

14. maybe we should build the paths using just the squares? The path would look boring  so the path pieces you lay down need to have some character.

15. Here's an idea for the shapes for the "path pieces":

16. All on the Path Pieces: Move tiles, "go again" tiles, move back tiles, mines, freeze (loose a turn) tiles, maybe tool tiles to help you dig under, or break obstacles???????! 

17. Should there be obstacles on the board already built in? I could create cards with different obstacle placement, and different levels of difficulty. 

17. Obstacle shapes

18. Types of obstacles: portals, rocks, walls, water:

19. How can you select a path piece at random? maybe a bag?
20. Would I be able to connect the boards into one big one? not really then the symbolism of it being your path is taken away, everyone is heading toward the same point.

The Path

The Path

 The Functional apace in this game is the 25 tiles you see in the picture above. These tiles create a 5 by 5 grid (of the ones with just lines) with the triangle and circle tiles (start and finish) at opposite sides fo the game board. These tiles are all all 2 dimensional continuous spaces in which a token can be placed, and they each have a nested path within them that the token is specifically placed on as well. 

You do not place anything on a "vertex" or "line" of this grid, just within the boundaries of the face of the tile can anything be placed. 

The sub paths (and the tiles they are on) can be translated across the board to "swap" the tile, or rotated to create a continuous path of wither color from one corner of the board to the other. The position of the tiles, and the rotation of them is the core mechanic in the game.The boundaries would be the 5 by 5 square, and the start and finish tiles, the player's token cannot venture outside of the tile space , and the shape of the board must remain consistant when swapping tiles across it. 

The actual objects in the game are your starter token (the dice in the picture) some kind of counter (two per player), and I even consider the game board to be an object. The Dice/player tokens have a move attribute where as long as a continuous path of it's color exists, the token may travel as far down that path as possible. The two other states could be the starting(within the tile with a circle) , and middle/turning back positions (when it is in the tile with a triangle). The token cannot be taken/moved/ influenced by anyone, and it's movement is only measured by the orientation of the tiles. As for counters, they mark only two tiles that you have swapped, and remain unlovable until the beginning of you next turn. I believe the tiles are vital objects, because even though they are the game board, they have to be constantly modified to create a path and complete the game, and are only frozen if your token is on it, or a counter is placed on it after a swap/translation. 

The only state that your opponent is aware of is the board's tiles and their orientation/freezes from a counter, and the location of your token on the game board. All other information like which move you plan to make is known only by each individual player. In this way it is much like chess, because revealing your intensions to the other player would cause you to loose the game.  

The operative actions in this game are : translation, rotation, move, and freeze. To reiterate, you can move your token, swap pieces on the board to create a path, rotate tiles (with or without your token in it), and freeze tiles from being used for one turn. In my experience playing this game, the resulting actions are dependent on the emotions of the players. If two players are agressive they can try to purposely freeze a needed tile for their opponent, but in my case, our resultant actions were parallel. We were more concerned with our pieces to waste a turn just to spite each other. In this game, I have found the minimalism to be refreshing. Even though you do not have many actions, it is easy to emerge yourself within the strategy of the game, rather than the game have a narrative. The fact that is it one strategy vs. another makes the game much more personal because there is a sense of pride on the line, and loosing that is powerful enough to make sure you see this game through to the end. 

The Goal of the game is to make it from the circle (of your color) to the triangle (of your color) and back to the circle. There is no points, or bonuses, it it just a simple race puzzle game. This is posible because the game board is small, where it becomes complicated is where there is a frozen tile from you opponent that you currently need to complete your path. 

Not only are the rules conveniently printable in small cards, they have no holes I can see that would cause for either a temporary or permanent house rule. This is only possible because of the simplicity of the game. There are three different ways to play the game, you can put the tiles face down, randomly

place the tiles face up, or you can strategically place the tiles face up to form the board, but the decision of the start has to be agreed upon by the two players. So far the rules have been solid, and well written. 

The skill required to play this game is all about thinking ahead and being able to use your imagination to visualize the general direction you would like to pursue.

Chance is not a heavy factor in the game. You lay down the initial tiles in a random order, so you could get lucky and a path could quite literally appear in front of you, but seeing as you can rotate tiles and move them, then no matter how random the game board is, it feels like the player has the most control in this game, and very little is left to chance.   

I really enjoyed this game! Even though there was not a lot of hype/energy created from playing it, I still got a good since of satisfaction and happiness from it. It was a good challenge, and I can say that in this case it was all we needed to have a good time.  

Fire and Water

Some friends and I had a print and play adventure with the game Fire and Water:

The game in the middle of play

This is the game board after we finished

Here is a place you can download it: (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/108406/fire-water)

So far I have learned that Five essential parts of print and play games are: rules, a game board, the game pieces fo the board, a good theme, and people to play it! Theme stood out to me the most when we played Fire and Water, because all it took to make us interested was a "cool" engaging theme and a checkerboard with fire and water-looking squares to make it come to life.

The game was pretty fun. The object is to claim as much of the board with your color as possible, once you run out of your solid colored squares then the game is over. We did find an extra mechanic. There is one more thing you can claim aside from space on the board, it's something called an "elemental" which are just three black squares, but there is not reward for claiming them. The rules have been written with ambiguous english grammer as well. It's not too bad, but the rules drone on, and are confusing to read at times, so those were the two main problems we found. If you play it, it will remind you of minesweeper, aside from that I think it's a very unique game. 

Adventuring Into The Real World

I know it's long, but here is my group's final presentation over path behavior on campus, and how we choose to manipulate it.