Thursday, September 25, 2014

Week 3: Finalizing some Details

Today we all brought in some cards to help visualize the game.  We also got down to work finalizing some more details of the game.

We needed to decide on the names / types of territories, so we brainstormed a bit on the names.  We came up with a nice list, such as a convenience store called 8/12 and a liquor store called Amy's Wine House.  Next we began deciding how much money each would cost.

The professor gave us the cool idea that territories should have risk levels, and higher risk places would have a higher pay-off when selling drugs.  We talked about this a bit and are still a little undecided about if / how we will implement this into our game.

Lastly, we talked about different ways of dealing the Event Cards.  Currently we had said that an event card would just be flipped over every round, but that didn't leave much room for strategy.  Now we are looking at a version where one player sifts off the top 5 Event cards and picks the one to play for the round.  Each round the card picker shifts to the left.  We also thought a little bit about having the card picker start with the player to the right of the player who goes first, and then continues to shift to the right.  This will somewhat alleviate the advantage of going first.

We picked who would make what cards so we can begin play-testing next week.

Saturday, September 20, 2014

Week 2: Core Concept Design

After agreeing on the idea of having a game based on Drug Lords, this week we started working on our core concepts. Last week, we agreed the only thing we wanted to keep was the idea of selling drugs and becoming a drug lord. With that in mind, we took a week to incubate our thoughts on what we actually wanted to do with the game. During our in-class core concept brainstorm session, we changed a bit of the theme of the game. Rather than just trying to collect more and more drugs, the game takes place in a neutral city where the players are different drug dealers competing to own the city. The drug lords must acquire different territories expanding their control of the city.
We changed the mechanics/rules of the game as well, and added an uncommon twist to the game. Each round, there is an event that happens which effect all the players in the game. The events range from positive events such as “Corrupt Official Elected to City Board” where players would be able to sell a certain drug for extra money. Other events could be similar to “Cops Crack Down” where everyone must discard a specific drug card. Adding onto the events, a player may buy action cards during their turn which may give them a bonus or be used against other players. On a turn, a player starts off by picking up either a drug or a weapon card, and then sells their drugs into their districts (if they choose too – they may not want to because certain events may make selling a certain drug more or less valuable). After that, a player has a choice of buying a territory out of the neutral remains in the city, attacking another player, or playing an action card. After doing one of these, the players turn ends.
Our game is going to require a lot of play testing to check how the events and action cards are going to work, and whether or not they add too much luck or negative player experience into the game. Also, we need to figure out how the combat system in the game is going to work. There is a lot of work that we still need to do, but we feel our game is headed down the right path.

Sunday, September 14, 2014

Week 1

Our group decided on a game called Drug Lord (maybe Cartel) loosely based on the show Breaking Bad. This game has minimum players of 3 and a maximum of 8. The point of the game is to make your way from a lowly street dealer to the top which is the Drug Lord. Once you become a Street Dealer, then you progress to being a Supplier, then a Lieutenant, and finally a Drug Lord. There are also two types of cards, action cards and resource cards. After discussing with the group we have decided on a variety of resource cards ranging from money, and guns to drugs. We are still in the process of deciding what else to change so this is a loosely framed idea. Some action cards we have decided on are the police card where it causes you to "go to jail" and lose a turn. There are also a bunch more which we are figuring out. Working with a group to develop this game was an enjoyable process. Our group works pretty well on making decisions and having different minds lets us bounce ideas off of each other so that we end up with a more refined result.