CAGD 170

Group 8

  Solitaire Confinement

Game Summary:

Solitaire Confinement is a game that requires concentration and attention to detail and is targeted towards 25-80 year olds. The goal of the game is to successfully stack 7 piles of cards, arranged in a certain order, onto Ace cards with no cards existing in the jail spots.


The starting setup should look like this (excuse the Star Wars themed deck):

Solitaire Confinement Setup, Final Design

Problems Encountered: 

When I first playtested this game with my partner, we figured out that the original design was too difficult. At first, there were 3 more jail card spots that the player was tasked with replacing. The Ace cards were also shuffled randomly into the game, so it was more difficult to create the foundation pile of cards.

After reading the rule sheet thoroughly, our playtester began to arrange the starting setup without any help. During the progression of the game, I observed that the player would not notice when a 2 card was available to be placed into an Ace pile, and he would continue playing.

Playtester In the Midst of the Game

In the image, the two of clover card can be seen neglected to in far right jail spot at the very top of the setup. This can potentially cause the player to become stuck and not know what to do after a certain point of stacking. Another issue is that none of the playtesters were able to finish in 10 minutes.

The other playtester seemed to place the cards messily, but correctly on the table without much instruction, and only using the rule sheet. Player seemed uninterested in playing solitaire and said "I was just placing cards where I thought they should go" as he replaced jail cards incorrectly by swapping them out with the same color card instead of the opposite color.  This subject didn't read the instructions carefully, so played the game messily.

Another Player, Progressing Hastily on the Game

Solutions: 

We modified the game by letting the player start with Aces out already and only four jail spots, so that it is harder for them to get stuck and have to restart. We finally completed a full game with the new design. The finished design is shown in the first image.

To solve the problem concerning the neglected 2 cards, we will modify the rule sheet to more clearly state that the point of the game is to stack the cards on the existing Ace cards. Since the player has to worry about the rules of so many ways to stack cards, it is understandable why small details can be missed. This is a game of contemplating, not racing a time limit. Therefore, altering the amount of cards set out will make the game too simplistic.

The solution to the other play tester's carelessness is to raise the age limit that we had originally set from 18 to 25 and 50 to 80, because (I can tell from my personal attitude towards some games) young people tend to have a shorter attention span. It might be helpful to add at the beginning of the instruction sheet to "Please read these instructions carefully."


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Ant Ball

"Ant Ball," Finished Prototype Game Board 

*This Picture is Missing the game's movable pieces,

an example of the game pieces can be found on 

the second image on this page (below)

Group 10:

The Sophie Afinowicz & Abby Powell Group

Game Summary  

Ant Ball is a game that consists of a race to get as many of your game pieces to the corresponding "Winners" pots before your opponent can. Targeted towards preschoolers ages 3-5 years, this game has a simple premise and gameplay which can be entertaining by scoring against the opponent.

Problems Encountered

In the first playtest of this game, one of us realized that we had forgot to make a spinner, which made it difficult for players play, since the spinner is the most essential part of our game. This is because the player uses it about 5 times during a single one of their turns, and it determines all of the movement of the game. In its place, a temporary spinner we created using a pencil and binder paper. Players would flick the pencil so that it would land on one of the options. Problems with this temporary mechanic was that the pencil would frequently fly off the paper and fall on the ground or not be a satisfying enough spin. A player suggested that we could use dice, but we needed specific kinds of chance spins that involved more than just numbers.

"Ant Ball" Board and Game Pieces, Incomplete

(Temporary Spinner)

Another problem that we encountered is that sometimes players would not know where to place their pieces when they reached the home base, which counted as a point for them. Multiple people would hesitate and place their pieces in the areas labeled "Ants" and "Wasps," and this was because of a tiny inconsistency in terminology between the rule sheet, which contained the word "Win box" and the board's design, which only included the names of the teams.




In the second time of playtesting about a week later, we had the spinner completed. It worked very well, despite it occasionally falling off of its tack that was holding it down. The players seemed to enjoy our game because of its simplicity and spinner mechanic. Most of their complaints came from the spinner's tendency to escape or some more minor details to fix in the rule sheet such as clarification of the fact that every turn, you move another game piece onto the board. Sometimes, if they were confused about this, then they would say something along the lines of "It's just like real baseball, where you move with each turn unless you strikeout."




The general consensus according to the playtesters was that our game is easy to understand, reasonable for the target audience, and has a clever design and relations to actual baseball.
Solutions


We refined the spinner so that it is actually very fun to flick and watch it spin. We also put "(WIN)" in parenthesis on the winner pot so that the players have an easier time realizing where to put their finished game pieces. Because the game is centered towards preschoolers, it is a must to know where each piece is put and also the basic movement of the pieces.



Some adjustments regarding rules also changed, explaining more of how the pieces move, how to change bases, and how the points are added up. The language of the game was also simplified to make the rule sheet easier to understand.

Side Note/ Conclusion


The obvious similarity between our game and the real game of baseball is fascinating to me, and it made me realize that game could be useful for small children to learn the basics of baseball in an entertaining way. I hadn't thought of this potential outcome when designing the game, so playtesting this game was interesting to see how people can bring a new perspective to your game.


Overall, our game proved to be a simple kind of game that can teach you the basics of baseball and allows you to race against your friends to score the most points.

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Headpats

Team Name: Paws (Group 12)

Game Name: Headpats

Game Summary

To win this game, one needs to obtain as many dog cards as possible through picking a card and rolling a dice to match the correct criteria listed on the card. Each card is worth different a different amount of points based on how difficult it is to roll.The demographics for this game is centered around 6-12 year olds who love dogs and competitive collector type games such as Go Fish or Pokemon.

Headpats Game Pieces 

(Left to right: Mystery card pile, Dog card pile, and two 6-sided Dice; held is example of the cards in the Dog card pile.)

Problems Encountered During Playtesting

Problem #1: Big hands, little cards.

The first thing that our playtesters mentioned was their feelings about the general design of the game. This includes the physical materials of what they are playing with such as the dice or the cards. The cards that I printed myself were too small, meaning hard to shuffle and grab. The cards in the picture are in fact the same ones that were used in all of the playtests so far. 

Solution: 

My group mate was tasked with figuring out a way to print the cards bigger, but had not completed the task by the third playtest. However, they still served as a purpose to test the game play.

Playtesting

Problem #2: Too many small dogs.

Another problem consisted of the fact that the dog cards that had small types of dogs were super difficult to roll for, because they require to roll only one number instead of a criteria of numbers. This is because they are worth the most points of all of the types of cards, therefore need to be difficult to obtain. When playtesting, I noticed that a particular player was feeling upset due to the fact that she could not obtain any cards and kept drawing small-dog cards and missing the roll. I thought that this would disengage players and cause them to become frustrated due to random chance and not skill.

Solution:

 There are ten total cards that are small-dog cards, five will be replaced and reprinted. The solution is to make more numbers for exactly half of the small-dog cards so the chances of drawing a difficult card is less, and therefore making small-dog cards more valuable.

Screenshot of Dog Cards in Photoshop (written on in red)

Problem #3: What do I do?

A mechanic that me and my partner thought would make the game more interesting would be different consequences if the player rolls a number higher or lower than the criteria listed on the dog card. If they rolled a number lower, then they would give it to their opponent to try. If they rolled a number higher, then they would simply put the card back into the bottom of the pile. The problem was that I had designed some of the cards to have rolls of numbers such as 1,6 or 3, 1. So, what do they do with a criteria of 3,1 and they roll a number 2? This is an issue with the rule sheet.

Solution:

We decided to scrap the lower-higher roll idea from the rule sheet. Players had more fun handing over the card to their opponent to attempt to roll the criteria instead of a possibility of an immediate discard. 

Problem #4: "Fleas"

There was a couple more issues with the types of mystery cards including a card called "Fleas" that instructed to discard five dog cards. The confusion happened if the player did not have any dog cards to begin with, then they have nothing to discard.

Solution:

This problem was solved by adding to the rule sheet to disregard and draw from the dog card pile again. I also made it so instead of requiring to discard five dog cards, they only discarded one.

Example of a Mystery Card

Problem #5: "Power-pup"

This is another problem with the mystery cards. The "Power-pup" card allows you to pick two cards in a turn instead of one. You can roll for both cards in that turn. But there are cards mixed into the dog card pile called cat cards. Those cards allow you to pick mystery cards. What if you use "Power-pup" and pick another cat card with it? It becomes very confusing.

Solution: 

The solution to this problem is to add to the rule sheet that you can have a limit of three cat cards drawn during one game and also to add that you have to redraw until you have two dog cards for this to work. No cat cards allowed.

Problem #6: Too many cats.

Originally, I had created a total of 6 cat cards shuffled into the deck. We quickly realized that players were getting cat cards even before they had drawn any dog cards. Victims of bad shuffling or does the dog game have too many cats?

Solution:

Just in case, I removed two of the cat cards from the mix and emphasized to shuffle the dog cards as best you can on the rule sheet.

Cat Cards Discarded Next to Original Dog Card Pile (dog card pile is in rubber bands)

Changes Moving Forward

Again, it is important to meet up with group partners more frequently than I did for this project. I might have unknowingly pulled the majority of the weight, getting caught up in making things for it. Because finals week is approaching, my partner was very distracted and I may have been more passionate about it because it was my idea in the first place. 

Another change would be putting more effort into the design of the game. I would like for the cards to have some sort of simple picture of the dogs on the cards. Not everyone knows how cute Sheltie dogs actually look.

Sheltie Dogs (Google Images)