Game Play, Theory & Practice Notes (28/10/2012):

• My feedback on our platforming board game 'SUPER PLATFORM BROS SUPER ULTRA EDITION' -
• I loved the design that my team came up with (Micheal, Jon and I). 
• I felt that our idea was very creative as it was a throw back to numerous old platforming games.
• Unfortunately the board game suffered due to numerous reasons:
1. My group's internet wasn't working and thus we could only communicate by text. 
2. When it did come to meeting up early before the lecture they ended up being an hour late as they had spent most of the previous night working on the game. Thus we didn't nearly have enough to time to go through the rules that we needed to add to in order for our game to work probably. 

Therefore those that played the game found it very hard to understand, especially since some of the rules were missing. 

• Peer feedback on our groups game -
• Felt original. 
• Good silly stories and character backgrounds.
• Hard but fun. 

But...

• Felt broken due to the lack of detailed rules. 
• Moving around was clear but fighting wasn't. 
• Wasn't clear if you were meant to be a team or not. 
• Not sure where to start. 
• The squares you moved on needed to be a lighter shade of colour so as to appear on the board more clearly. 
• Too many fights occurred in the game's journey.

• My group’s feedback on the peer game 'Power Up!' -
• Too much falling down.
• Less caps would make the game easier and pleasant. 
• Rules were not 100% clear.
• The power ups in question were more often disadvantages and not advantages as the name suggested them to be.   
• Very evil game for being so difficult, and yet so satisfying to win it.

• My personal review of 'Power Up!' -
• In this game you start at the bottom of the board and had to make your way to the top in order to win. Sounds simple right? Well stopping you are a magnitude of pit falls that, if you fall down make you lose one of your five lives. Unfortunately this happened far to often as not only were there too many pitfalls, but the so named 'power up' cards that you could collect hindered you almost all the time. Therefore the first time we played the game we didn't even make it half way as we either fell to our deaths or had power ups that made us fall through the pits. After relishing that it was such a hard game we as a group then decided that that was part of the game's charm as despite it being so hard it was so satisfying to try and beat and therefore became fun. Incidentally one of us did win near the end of our trial run.Overall, if the group who made the game wanted to make it fairer then the power up cards need to be balanced and the board needs to contain less pit falls. However, if they were to advertise it as a super hard game then maybe it would work to their advantage.

• My group’s feedback on the peer game Tower Climbing Game -
• Good fun.
• Felt fair, as in anyone could win it. 
• Was the group's favorite.
• Rules not 100% clear. 

•  My personal review of the Tower Climbing Game -

• The second game my group played was the game that we dubbed the 'Tower Climbing Game' as it had no name. In this game you started at the bottom of the board and had to build platforms in order to reach the top of the tower and thus win the game. However, in order to make things more difficult the game included a lot of strategy with shops that could only be used by certain players and within these shops abilities that could be bought in order to slow down the other players. This game ended up being our group's favourite board game as it was both fun and surprisingly tactical, as by the end of it when you realised you were running out of platforms to place. This was especially true when I almost won the game and was one platform away from winning, but in the end lost when the others in my group ganged up on me and used abilities that stopped me from taking my turn. Now granted, the rules were not totally clear and therefore we had to start over when we realised we were doing things wrong, but apart from that we had a lot of fun with this bright and colurful game that I could easily see being a success.   

• My group’s feedback on the peer game Lego adventure -
• Rules not 100% clear. 
• Far too many pit falls! 
• Needed balancing.

•  My personal review of Lego adventure -

• The final game our group played was the game we also had to name as it had no name 'Lego adventure'. The reason we named it this was because you used little Lego figures in order to move around the board, and the fact that the board itself looked like a prymaid from a bird's eye view made for a nice visual touch. In this game you had to place your character's token on the board depending on the cards you picked up and then collect that piece whilst making your way around the board before reaching the top. Sounds simple right? Well sadly this is not the case due to the fact that they were a number of broken platforms that made you fall to the ones below. When I say a number I mean far too many as we kept falling down these and thus found the game too difficult as every time you fell you had to return to previous spaces, thus making the game overly unfair. This along side the complicated and contradicting rules didn't help either as my group were trying to figure out if we could steal the other players' tokens or not as at the same time the rules said you started off with them and then later contracted it.