Week 43

We began this week by going over the feedback that we’d received from the two groups from last week. The feedback showed us that the movement system we had worked and was enjoyable to an extent. What we had was to thin, it had no depth and adding this depth was what took the most of my attention this week. Figuring out how to benefit the players to avoid each other but at the same time put something there to motivate them to confront on another was frustrating. Handling this depth took a great deal of effort and consulting within the group. “Keep it simple, stupid” was a motto to go by when dealing with the task to make this game more interesting.  The same as for last week, iteration was the key.

From play testing, we found out that the treasure hunting was an interesting feature and that it was a good reason to make the players move around the map. Much tweaking was needed for the cost of the cannons and what treasures there were.

We ended up with what we call “Voodoo cards” which is a way to give the players an opportunity to affect the environment. This made an otherwise a bit sterile movement system become alive and there where now more options thrown to the player.

I had done some thinking on my own during this week trying to come up with something that would interest the players. And all week I felt like I had it on the tip of my tongue but it was not quite there. I had one defined change though and that was to separate the winning condition from the currency. I felt that that was the snag.  This winning condition was decided by the group at the end of the week. Some thought was also spent on the map itself in regard of the hexagonally patterned platform that we use and to make these two works together.

I am happy with the result for this week, I feel like we came a long way as from where we were at the beginning of this week.