Game Play, Theory & Practice Notes (1/10/2012):

• What is needed in a game? – Rules, feedback system, goals and voluntary participation.
• Munchkins is a highly recommended card game that may be good for me to get.
• Everyone seemed to love my game! :D
• Peer feedback on my groups game –

o   Slow to begin with but becomes good fun and combative when you have to decide on strategies to beat the others.

o   Wasn’t 100% clear on whether you got eliminated when next to the dungeon’s walls e.g. 3 lines next to one.

o   Pieces (figurines) were too big compared to the board.

o   Door blocking wasn’t clear.

o   Liked the D&D feel.

• My group’s feedback on the peer game ‘Square-opoly’ –

o   Landing on a Train Station does not result in anything. Maybe they could teleport you to other stations on the board?

o   Parts of the rules were not very clear.

o   Scoreboards are confusing.

o   Jackpot did not do anything.

o   A small nit-pick, you only really need one dice, otherwise you constantly miss locations on the board.

o   Unlike Monopoly which obviously inspired this game, landing on ‘Go’ did not result in anything.

o   Also unlike Monopoly there is a ‘Jail’ space. However, it was not clear if the rule in Monopoly ‘Just visiting’ still applied or not when you landed on it.  

o   Goes on for a little too long due to the amount of points you need. Therefore maybe change the points needed to twenty points instead of forty.

o   Overall, it was a bit of a drawn out game but otherwise it works.

• My personal review of ‘Square-opoly’ –

o   The first game I played was basically Monopoly but called itself Square-opoly. However, instead of buying properties you drew a line when you landed on one in order to try and create a square. Once a square was created you would own the property and thus collect points (the replacement for money in the game) whenever a player landed on it. Rather like Monopoly it was long but, I personally did not find it as much fun as I hoped it would be due to how long it took to acquire forty points. This was because it took a long time to secure a location and the one point tax that was on each property. Thus it was very hard to get to own a property in the game, let alone have a player land on it. Overall, I would say that this game would make a good prototype as it contained the supports for a good interpretation on the game squares. However, the issues above combined with rules that were not 100% clear pulled the game back from making it a recommendation. If the game can improve its faults then I would be very happy to give it a second shot. Also maybe if each property had different taxes on them as in Monopoly then this would not only make it easier to win the game but also add a bit more variety.     

• My group’s feedback on the peer game ‘Mr. Square’ –

o   Could maybe start on a block instead of a corner.

o   Pen colours or background colours need to change so as the pen marks show.

o   Good simplistic fun.

o   Starts a bit slow but gets very competitive and more engrossing as the game goes on.

o   As everyone had the same paths it soon became a game of chance with the dice when players discovered the best path to take.

• My personal review of ‘Mr. Square’ –

o   The second game I played was called ‘Mr. Square’. In this game you have to roll a dice and draw the equivalent lines in order to create squares. Once a square was made you could reach the square after it and so on. The aim of the game was to connect squares to the four items on your side of the board before reaching the middle and thus winning the game. It was a bit slow to begin with but as the game went on I found it became a lot more fun due to the fact that it got more and more competitive just as the other players neared the middle of the board. However, it was also primarily a game of chance and therefore once everyone found out the best route to take, as each player’s side of the board was the same, it soon became a race of who could roll the highest and thus reach the middle first. Perhaps if square tiles, that you could flip over were introduced to add a risk or reward to players then this would perhaps convince them to take risks and not just go on the same path again and again and again.