The Making of Class Wars

So this week in Game Design and Production I we were required to make a collection game (For my blog about collection games click Here) and man was it difficult. You are all probably wondering how a collection game could be difficult, I mean come on all you have to do is design a game where you have to collect things to win, but that my fellow gamers (or bloggers, readers, whatever you call yourself) is where you are seriously wrong.

The Beginning of The Collection Game

At first glance making a simple collection game looks easy, but that is an illusion (I actually really want to say that it is a damn lie but I thought the word illusion sounded nicer) because yes making a collection game is easy but making it fun and engaging well that's the tricky part. Since collection games have such a simple core aspect about them (You are just picking up stuff, how hard can that be?) you as a game designer need to add in interesting mechanics to make your game more fun and enjoyable (otherwise it's just going to be a giant pile of boring). 

The Designing of The Ideas

Now this was the issue my group and I faced when making our collection board game, despite the collection of ideas (Ha see what I did there) we had, we were stuck on what to add to create dynamic game play. Some of our ideas where as followed:

• The Miner Game- You are a miner digging for Jewels and Minerals, each one would have it's own rank and whoever had the highest number of Jewels/Minerals/rank would win.
• The Hacker Game- It was basically the same as the miner game, however you would collect keys/ key cards and you would need to decrypt in order to collect them.
• Nerd Wars- This idea was changed so much during our creative process, I almost cannot even remember what the original idea was. If I remember correctly the original idea was that you played as nerds trying to collect the most amount of A+'s, however there was no guarantee that you would collect an A+. That was then changed multiple times until we got to a Trivia board game where players must collect nerd points by answering nerdy questions about movies, games, comics, etc that those labeled as nerds enjoy (This was my favorite idea of all the Nerd War ideas I'm so mad we didn't use it), which was later changed.
• Our Current Idea, Class Wars - This sort of combined the all the ideas of Nerd Wars (except the Trivia one which I'm still bummed about)

 The Planning of Class Wars

Class Wars:

  So the current version of Class Wars (which I personally don't like as much because I think the trivia version would have been more fun but oh well) has players playing as nerds trying to get into UOIT (The University of Ontario Institute of Technology for anyone who doesn't know), and in order to be accepted you must collect A's in all  8 subject.

The Writing of the Rules

(Yes Gianluca actually started cleaning while we were making our game, although he did come up with some good ideas while doing it)

Here are the rules, game pieces and important legends needed to play this game:

Class Wars

Game Rules:

• Everyone must start within the middle of the board.
• The player must decide which hallway they wish to go down to start. (Players may only move 1 spot per turn through the entire board.)
• All hallways take 2 steps to move through the whole hall.
•  Once decided the players must choose which class path they wish to take, there are two classes available in each path, only one can be completed at a time.
•  Once a player chooses a path, they must stick with it until the final exam is written.
•  The players must always move in a counter-clockwise manner. (Unless they are within a hallway, then they may move throughout the hallways to get to another hallway.)
•  Player may re-enter hallways. (This rules still follows the counter-clockwise as well as the class-path ruling.)
• To win, the player must get an A in all of the 8 classes. (Each class’ mark is made up of 2 assignments, a midterm and an exam. The total grade is out of 36. Add your dice rolls up to see your final grade.)
•  The game can be played with 2-4 players
• Players collect tokens to keep track of how many points they have in each class. Once a mark is received players must mark it down on a piece of paper and return the previously own tokens to the bag and start collecting points for the next subject.

Items Included:

• The Nerd Wars Game board.
• 2 D6 Dice
• Point Tokens

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Color & Mark Legend:

• Green -> Path changer. The player must choose which direction they wish to move in.
• Purple -> Assignment. When landing on an assignment tile, the player must roll a D6 to decide which grade they will receive. The grade is out of 6.
•  Orange -> Midterm assignment. When landing on a midterm tile, the player must roll two D6s to decide which grade they will receive. The grade is out of 12.
• Red -> Final Exam. When landing on a final exam tile, the player must roll a two D6s to decide which grade they will receive. The grade is out of 12.
•   Blue -> Dice Roll Event. Roll two D6s to get a number. Once rolled, check the “Dice Roll Legend” to see what happens.
•   Yellow -> Hallway. Walk.

 

Click pictures for larger view

While Gianluca and Clement typed out the rules that the group thought of earlier (adding some as they went along when they realized we were missing some) Evelyn and I began to draw out the board (Clement came to join us afterwards).

 The Drawing of The Board

 

Unfortunately we ran out of  the blue marker we were using and needed to go pick up another one just as we were about to finish the board (You can see the squares that were left).

 The Finishing Touches

 MY THOUGHTS:

This assignment was the hardest one yet!! Personally I think making a collection board game (When almost all the collection games I know are digital games) is the hardest thing to make since there are just so many things you have to be aware of while designing. My group and I had to be really careful to keep the game from being boring and uneventful with out including cards in our game (Gianluca, Clement and Jesse didn't want to add cards in this game unlike our other games). I know that this assignment was a good teaching tool for us as game designers, but I didn't enjoy working on our collection game at all (not because we didn't go with the trivia idea but because of the amount of issues we ran into with the game play that caused us to constantly rework it). I am interested to see how my other classmates took on the challenge of making a collection game and what they think of our game.

 The Finished Product