Week 5

The week of October 10th was the very first time that our classmates had the opportunity to play our card game. In addition to this, our group was able to meet with people outside of the class so we could get feedback through various perspectives. As our classmates played our game, Brent took down various notes that better assisted our re-occuring problems. We never knew how to initiate the game, but based upon other opinions and a vote within the group, we came up with setting the cards up so that a snake draft occurs. By doing this, we believe this will benefit the strategic methods because each person will be able to know exactly at least one animal that his or her opponent may have. Also, we concluded that the game terminates as 7-8 animals are in a player's "graveyard". In regards to the amount of cards we need, it became apparent that more animal cards were needed, and less of certain foods such as carcass and jungle fruit. At the end of each round, we made it a point that layers can trade in one food source to draw another. Rather than having every food worth a +2 bonus to towards an animal's combat, we decided it would be best if we made a change to that. We now have animals with higher combat, such as the lion, to eat 3 meats in order to get to full combat strength, but every meat has a different bonus value to it. By doing this, we figured it would balance out the stronger animals with the weaker animals, and any duel can be interesting--especially one where a prairie dog encounters a lion. Our group is meeting today to create the rule book and finalize all of our vague ideas when in action playing the game. The progression of our card game has been settle, but we all feel as if we came along way since the beginning of our game.

Week 2

On September 19th, our group had to discuss the core mechanics and structure of our chosen card game. Unfortunately for us, our original designer of the game did not attend class. This definitely affected the group because the strategies that were mentioned in the paper were very vague. We found it to be fairly simple to develop the features of the game, but based upon the discussion in class, features should be one of the last things to develop. With the leaders help, our group was eventually able to bounce off of each other's ideas and create a base for what possible strategies can be. By the end of our discussion, we all seemed to be content with our brainstormed ideas. We anticipate on meeting with each other sometime next week to finalize our strategy ideas with the original designer. Also, we are meeting so we can begin to design our cards in the hopes that it will turn out as expected.

It's all coming together

After prototyping our game during class last week we realized there were many problems that needed to be solved. One of our biggest issues was our food cards. The way our group had designed the game allowed for multiple rounds of forfeit. We originally had a rule that if there were not enough food cards to play any of the animals in your hand you must forfeit. Luckily, with the help of Professor Parks, we were able to create a slightly tweaked version of our game that allowed animals to play with no food cards.  Instead the game now incorporates food cards as a way to increase your animals combat skills. Not only did this solve our problem, but it also allowed for more strategy in our game.

Having decided that the food cards were better off as a way to increase an animals combat skill left our group with plenty of work to do this week. Angela and I calculated the food bonus values of each animals desired food this past weekend at the library. Also while we were at the library we changed the values of the animals base combat skill. We created the cards so that even the animal with the weakest starting combat skill, with enough food, could compete against some of the more powerful animals in our game. After the values were decided Victor and Angela met up a day or two later to edit our original cards. The new animal cards had their new combat skill values, food bonus values, and other various cosmetic kinks taken care of. A day later i printed the cards and our group met up at the student center to prototype our game. The game has come a long way since its beginning stages. Hopefully this week other groups can give our group some good insight to help kink out the final issues.

Week Three, finally making sense of things

The objective this week was to add more choice and strategy to the our game.  We attempted to accomplish this by including a new type of card, a food card, to go along with our action and animal cards.  We have run into problems with deciding how many of each card is going to make the game the most fun and most strategic, all while leaving minimal outcome to chance.  We met at the student center on tuesday and got more done than at any of our other meetings.  Mark and I were in charge of deciding what each animal ate, how much they ate, how many of each card to make, and the strengths of all the animals.  We also designated the adjectives in front of the animal titles to make it more creative.  Angela and Victor were in charge of making the cards on photoshop, getting the pictures for each animal and food card, as well as creating the action cards on the computer.  We all pitched in when it came to thinking of action cards, and that went rather well considering the different personalities in the group.  All in all, this week was our most successful week by far, but we have plenty more to do.  I look forward to meeting in class and again afterwards to workout the rest of the kinks.

Our first experience: Picking one blog out of four

During last class, September 12th, our group agreed upon picking Brent's card game idea called The Rumble in the Jungle. Our leader, Victor, heard out everybody's idea, but the decision was made effortlessly because we all felt that the other three ideas were more appropriate for a board game. Brent had given the entire group great clarification as to how the mechanics of the game functioned. Fortunately for our leader, the decision was unanimous amongst all members that Brent's game was the most interesting. Also, The Rumble in the Jungle seemed to be the most practical and cost effective game. It's an idea that can definitely promote a positive atmosphere for all players.