Here is a rundown of my efforts in contribution to this game:
March 19 – I first proposed the idea of using poker cards as the main form of play, placing them down on the table to form a unique kind of board and having the core gameplay involve flipping cards over and taking an effect/initiating combat/etc. based on the listed number. While we ended this day with multiple different ideas, the use of poker cards is something we latched onto moving forward.
March 21 – As we veered toward the direction of a detective cluefinding game, I proposed the idea of using the suit of the cards to determine the type of clue players are solving. So “club” cards, for example, would tell about the location. We continued brainstorming and I studied similar types of board games like Clue and Paranormal Detectives to help generate ideas.
March 26 – I designed half of our documentation sheets listing “location” options and “motive” options, and wrote a handful of event cards which players would use to ask and answer questions. I also stayed for the first playtest and took notes on our feedback, citing how players found the core gameplay very creative and interesting but felt the AI should create some greater kind of conflict.
March 28 – Based on our feedback, I spent a lot of time considering various ways the AI could be enhanced. We playtested the game within our team for most of the class period and each took notes on certain places where we felt the AI should hinder progress, such as after a guess is incorrect or after a question is asked/answered too directly. I proposed ideas of (under certain conditions) having the AI cross off a number of items from the documents based on a dice roll, meaning that players would no longer be able to guess those options. Designing this part was easily the most challenging part of the process, especially since we found it difficult to put limits on questions to stop people from just asking “which card do you have?” But I also proposed using a 3-second timer for drawings which at the very least helped balance the game and make it more fair.
April 2 – The biggest success of our game was definitely the core gameplay loop of asking and answering questions which made for a lot of funny and clever moments. However, the biggest weakness was still the AI feeling somewhat weak and the lack of obstacles is something I wanted to focus on. I proposed a last minute idea based on my efforts with the component exercise to have two poker cards drawn at the end of each round, or after an incorrect guess, and the lowest numbered card is how many words players were limited to with their questions in the next round. Overall, I’d say our game came together fairly nicely and everyone on our team contributed a lot to make this all work.
Component Exercise:
With this exercise, I aimed to give the poker cards a greater purpose both thematically and in gameplay. Since players only draw one card at the start, the remaining 48 cards go unused which makes them feel sort of pointless. With my new idea, the “killer” in our detective game is the Joker card. It rests face up in the center and fulfills the role of the AI.
Solution 1 is at the end of a round, or after an incorrect guess, players will draw two cards from the remainder of the poker deck and place them face up below the Joker. The AI then selects the lowest numbered card to be the limit on the word count for all questions in the following round. Solution 1B involves a case where a face card appears, in which case that card represents a false witness who draws an additional card and crosses that number off all document sheets for the rest of the game.
Solution 2 is similar to the first, but in the case of drawing a face card, the default is to instead draw from the Joker’s event deck which all have negative effects such as “answer falsely” or “only draw half of the answer.”
Solution 3 is to place five poker cards face down in the center, similar aesthetically to an actual game of poker, but then having a player select two random cards to flip over, in which case both of those cards are crossed off all document sheets for the rest of the game.