Devlog 4

This week the focus was to design a very simple and basic analogue game derived from an aspect of a real life sport. We were given a large youtube playlist containing hundreds of sports from all parts of the world and were tasked to pick one that we liked and felt like we could make a pretty entertaining board or card game out of. The sport I decided on is called Mounted Cowboy Shooting, and it functions pretty similarly to how the title sounds. Players and competitors are mounted on horseback and run through a track or course while shooting blank rounds at balloons to pop them. The goal is to complete the course as fast as possible while shooting as many balloons as possible, where having the fastest time determines the winner. If any balloons were missed and not popped, time was added to the players finishing time in relation to how difficult the balloon was to hit. Our group, however, settled on a version of curling and shuffleboard. Our board game, we called it Skrewball, turned out to be super fun. To play, up to 4 players are given 3 beads or sliders each and they all simultaneously slide them into the middle of a Plus Sign shaped board. Points are awarded based on where the beads land in a series of 5 concentric circles giving 1, 2, 3, 5, and 7 points, with the larger point values being more difficult to get, though not impossible. A full game consists of 5 rounds, where one round sees the players sliding each of their beads at the same time and adding points based on where beads end up at the end of three throws. Definitely one of the features that kept our game interesting and engaging to the end was the sense of drama we were able to achieve through 2 ways. The first was that even a last place player could have an amazing round 5 and emerge the winner, making the game feel like it’s never really decided until it’s over. The second and, in my opinion, most important way is that mistakes or sabotages from other player’s beads are permanent (Foddy 11:02). By this, I mean that players had to make sure that their slides were placed and measured out correctly to gain points. Bad slides are permanent and result in no points. Players sabotaging one another, intentionally sliding a bead into another player’s bead to knock it out of the score zone, is also a real decision in our game. Sabotaging would likely mean that you may not score points for yourself on that slide, but it could also mean that you stop an opponent from getting a game changing score at the end of that round. This created a sort of metaphor of high stakes, “I run the chance of not furthering my own score by taking the chance to hurt my opponents’ scores” (Foddy 15:38). One uncertainty of our game that arose once we actually began playtesting was “How do we determine where a bead scores if it overlaps into two zones.” Our best solution for the moment was to agree upon where it looks like the majority of the bead is and allow it to score the amount on that side. However, for the smallest circle, the one worth 7 points, we all agreed that the bead had to be 100% inside that circle to count for 7 points. This actually created a good sense of sportsmanship between each of the players because it created and “cultivated” an atmosphere of integrity (Foddy 16:41). We all felt like we were working together to keep the game fair and respectful, even at times where being honest about how a bead appears to land might result in our own score being less or allowing an opponent to get a really amazing score. I really enjoyed this exercise and I definitely feel like I learned some very valuable lessons in design this week.