This is a small update of rules and map after the final playtest. I’ve updated the “how to play” section according to the process, depicted in play video. We decided not to mention the game master directly, but technically this role still exists. One of the players will take it as the broadcaster of the map.
Changes in the map include 2 additional rooms – attic and corridor as well as door between game room and kitchen. So that hunters have more options to move now. Attic was added to give ghosts a clear start space. And a rounds marker space just to note how many times the teams have won. And the map was turned landscape, so that it can be shared right from the rule set.
Today we finally had our last playtest before submission to try out the 2 options for our rules.
Firstly, I have revorked the rules according to our previous discussions and designed the look, and had some friends read them to give feedback. The rulles were described as clear and easy to understand. Also they preferred the option without a game master
Playtest option 1
We decided to test this option as well. Thus from the beginning it went not very coherently as we’ve mixed the two “how to play” versions. So players acted according to the following scheme:
Ghosts mute themselves and hunters decide on their positions (they discuss it and form a strategy)
Hunters mute themselves and ghosts decide on their positions (same applies to ghosts)
Hunters reveal positions and clashes are announced, as well as rooms, claimed by ghosts. This can be done by any player as they wish, preferably the one, who’s sharing the map and can make marks.
Such approach went quite well, but according to playtesters’ feedback, had several major issues.
a) That most of the time players spend silent and waiting for the other team to decide. We didn’t set the time limit for discussion, so sometimes it took quite long. Also there’s a big opportunity to cheat.
b) We found out that hunters’ moves are quite limited. Playtesters offered at least to add a door between kitchen and game room, so that they can access that part of house faster. Since they’re allowed only one move to a connected room per turn, they end up wandering between entrance, living room and kitchen for most of the time. Another alternative suhggestion was to allow hunters up to 2 moves per turn. Thus this part is debatable, because hunters always prevail over ghosts and as a team we think that allowing ghosts have some extra rooms claimed in the beginning of the game because hunters can’t get there physically yet is fair enough.
Playtest option 2
After that we tried another option which is basically a bit improved original scheme (this was offered and developed by Trini), where everyone should have typed in their position at the same time. This time the positions were revealed simultanoisly per team and it was made spontaniously without any discussion, so that players have to rely on mostly luck and knowledge of each others possible strategy or behaviour.
Moving patterns remain the same: hunters limited, ghosts can go anywhere. Clashes are now announced on the end of hunters’ turn. Who starts first is decided by luck, let’s say, with the help of a coin. Or another random challenge.
Playtesters found this version far more fun and enjoyable as well as quicker. Which is fair enough, because the previous one had no discussion time limit. Here discussions are eliminated at all. Since desisions are almost spontanious and quick, players make more strategy mistakes and clashes happen more often, making the game more dynamic.
Among other suggestions for the future were to resolve stailmate issue, because hunters almost always win them. With randomness of this version ghosts should have more opportunities to survive the stailmate;
To add more rooms to the mansion as the game ends quite fast. What I will partly try to do by the submission date;
To introduce the opportunity for hunters to undo claimed rooms, because ghosts claim them too fast sometimes. The problem with the claimed rooms was that players didn’t tend to enter or pass them even though it is allowed by the rules. We’ll try to enphasize it more in the rules, I think;
The game master issue
Still I have noticed one issue here. Even though we decided to eliminate the role of a game master, technically we still have it as someone has to share the map and mark the positions as you’ll see in the game process video. This person announces clashes as well. Anyone can take up this role from any team and still play the game, but technically we didn’t manage to get rid of the role completely. Otherwise the game would be chaotic.
Conclusions:
The game is mainly working, not according to the scheme that we intended to playtes, but we managed to update our original shoutout idea and bring the chaos to the minimum. Also we don’t need to use technicalities like sound muting. The game is not finished at this stage and can be developed further to enlarging the mansion and adding some features like the one to undo the ectoplasm. The balance between hunters and ghosts need adjusting as well. But still it’s a decent working prototype wich was successfully created by collaboration of 3 people: Arthur, Trini and me. We enjoyed it 🙂
Since we have an advantage of a game artist in our team, we should use the opportunity to make our game visually appealing as well. Because I believe that visuals are responsible for the atmosphere and immersion into a game, even if it’s a game for videochat.
For our game we suggest players a template of a haunted mansion house.
This is an upgrated version of the original draft made by Arthur, that we used in our first playtest.
My task was to make it visually appealing and correlating with the whole game concept of a spooky house. That’s why I’ve chosen a dark blue-purple colour scheme with some bright contrasting colours, even though their vibrancy was slightly desaturated to keep the atmosphere. Also most of the rooms have red elements which catch attention. That can potentially play with players’ psychology and make them choose these rooms more often (for both teams) which will cause more clashes and game activity.
As a game artist I must take into account our rules and highlight the most important areas. First of all I clearly labeled all the rooms. Also you can notice that entrance area stands out of the rest of the rooms with lighter colours, even compared to the kitchen, which has similar light tiles. That was done on purpose as the Hunters team starts from that particular area. Same thing concerns Ghosts. In the rules they start from the attic. Though it’s not possible to place the attic, covering the rooms underneath, I decided to make just an entrance to a supposed attic area, where Ghosts will start their game. To underline that it’s clearly a ghost area, I used stereotypical green “ectoplasm”-green colour to encourage player’s familiarity and positive stereotypes. I have also spread some ectoplasm drops over the whole building, but for the entrance, since it’s exclusively the hunters’ territory.
Overal, I’m satisfied with the result along with my teammates. I believe I managed to create a firm visual base of our project and we will adjust the whole presentation to this particular style. It concerns the rule set document layout and colour scheme, which I’ll make while further playtests are taking place and the rules are being polished more and more.
Having considered and discussed the problems encountered from the playtest, we decided to opt for the last game option with 2 teams and develop the rules in that area. That’s how our rule set looks at this point:
First of all we have intervined the topic with the gameplay more by setting up different goals for each team to win. Now ghosts must claim all the rooms by filling them with ectoplasm while hunters must kill all the ghosts.
I think, we’re on the right track to solve the main issue of this version – “a lot of nothing happened”. At least we’ve introduced a rule, that hunters prevail over ghosts and now even if there’s a draw between the number of ghosts and hunters – hunters take over and kick out ghost players from the game. Also we have changed the way different teams are allowed to move, what brings an element of strategy. Ghosts now can move freely, what will significantly rise the amount of clashes and action.
We are still struggling with figuring out, whether players should take turns to take positions. From one point that would solve the problem of chaos, when revealing positions. From the other side the game would be laking that part of randomness and open possibility for cheating, that is to change position while other players are in the prosess of revealing. But I guess, that is the question of playtests. They will show if this fear is true or not.
For now we have 3 options to test, suggested by Triny and Arthur:
Option 1: Everyone moves at the same time (w/ Arthur’s idea) Round starts with everyone secretly choosing where they want to go The ghosts reveal their desired location to the game master as the hunters mute/deafen their voice chat The hunters reveal their desired location to the game master as the ghosts mute/deafen their voice chat Everything is revealed at the same time (EVENTS OCCUR) Round finish and repeat
Option 2: Team by team movement Hunters round starts with the hunters secretly choosing where they want to go (teams cannot discuss) The hunters type out their location at the same time, and the mansion owner marks down the new location of the hunters (EVENTS OCCUR) Ghost’s round starts where the ghosts type out their location at the same time, and the mansion owner marks the new location of the ghosts (EVENTS OCCUR) Back to hunters round and repeat
Option 3: Individual Team Movement (how order is decided i’m not sure) A hunter chooses where they want to go and types it out They move to that location (EVENTS OCCUR) A ghost chooses where they want to go and types it out They move to that location (EVENTS OCCUR) Repeat with every player
Apart from that I’m starting to develop the visuals, particularly our mansion map. That part is on me and I’m planning to make the visuals a bit old style spooky house.
This week it’s time to playtest our game. By this time we have 2 versions of the game: more simple and abstract and thematic with developed rules and teamwork.
WE developed approximate rules for both options:
// Rules //
Player Count: 6-10 players;
players are separated into two groups (red & blue), each player has 2 lives (or more).
goal is to gain as many points in 5 rounds. team with the most points winds.
points are won by taking out members of opposing teams.
at the start of the round players from each team choose which room they want to go to.
if there are more players in a room than the other, the team with the highest amount of players takes a point. the room used cannot be chosen again on the next round.
a room w/ 1 player alone, or a stalemate gives no points.
how the teams / players communicate is up to them, but voice cannot be used. decision making is kept to 2 minutes max.
// ‘Simpler’ version //
Player Count: 3 – 6;
players start with 3 lives
each player must move every round (cannot stay on the same number)
Round begins with players deciding a number from 1-9, they shout/type out the number, or display the number with their fingers
if anyone calls out the same number then that person loses a life (how do we decide which of the 2 loses life?)
If there is a clash and two or more people call out the same number, that number can no longer be used
Rounds are repeated until there is one person left (or somehow all the numbers are called out)
On Thursday we had our playtest and here are some results and analysis.
Game 1 simple version
(we deсided that simple option will go without teams eventually)
5 players, 3 lives
Option 1: A square disappears till the end of the game:
+ it works as a mechanism to speed up the game as it limits game space, making players to clash more in the rest of the rooms. Taking into account that the game is pretty random, the less people are left the more tries will be needed for them to clash and proceed the game.
Option 2: A square disappears just for 1 round:
Potentially that could be of use if the number of players is big enough (10+), when decreasing the game space will cause too many players clashing at the same time and loosing lives too fast. The issue can be corrected with increasing the number of lives for each player, but still a playtest is needed here, which is pretty hard to provide with that amount of players. So, I guess option 1 is better for our case since we managed to playtest it and it worked well enough.
Major problems encountered:
Simultaneous answers. The game requires players reveal their positions simultaneously so that none of them could change their mind. Playtest revealed that it’s very hard to do in audio chat. Possible solution – using the writing chat, where players post on count 3-2-1, what worked well during the playtest of game version 2.
1:1 final clash. When 2 final players left with 1 life remaining – they will both loose life when they clash. Possible solution – implementing a final round rule where a death square is assigned by one of the players or a game master. The player, who finishes in that square – looses. (But what if they both choose the death square? We’ll have same situation left. Or we can accept, that after the final round both can lose. TO BE CONSIDERED)
Some more questions to consider:
The amount of lives and rounds (if any for this version). We tested 3 lives which worked fine. I don’t think we need rounds here and just lest the game finish with the last one standing since the game is fast
Do we need a game master. During the playtest Arthur was in supervisor role and helped to follow the amount of lives and players’ positions in both versions of the game. I personally (as a potential player) would prefer having a game master without the need to follow myself. And it makes the game more organized. But for the simple version it can be decided by the players themselves, and the game master can play alongside others as the counting is not hard. Thus the role of a game master becomes more significant in the developed version with the mansion house as the game transforms into sort of a role-play as well, where the game master should not only document the process of the game, but to be a real host and sort of an entertainer as well.
According to the feedback, simple version is quick, easy, tense and random. The visual greed should be always visible to players, which is easier than draw the grid by players individually.
Game 2: long version – thematic: haunted mansion
2 teams: ghosts and ghost hunters aka team red and team blue.
5 rounds
Clash system – if there’re more ghosts than hunters in one room, ghosts score a point and vice versa.
Goal – get max team points for the set amount of rounds.
Team members don’t lose lives while in clash
If there’s a draw in the room – nothing happens and the game continues with no one scoring
According to the feedback, the game was more fun and entertaining as it can potentially develop a role play element, which will make the game more immersive. Adding strong visuals to our mansion scheme will be a bonus.
This time we tried revealing the positions via written chat, which was much more comfortable (for me as well since I was one of the players).
Major issue: ‘a lot of “nothing happened”’. During the playtest the majority of rooms were taken by one team member or “draw room” happened. We should think about how to increase the amount of action. Possible solution – set up a system of amount of playable rooms depending on the amount of players to make them clash more. We used the same system to cross out the clash rooms, but for the amount of test players that was still too much.
Communication questions: Originally we had 2 options for communication – silent or separate chats for teams. First would allow randomness and second would allow strategy. But during playtest we opted for the silent/secret one because we’ve realized that otherwise teams would just vote for all coming to one room and waiting. So we need to make them constantly change positions.
Suggestions:
To intersect the theme with gameplay. Playtesters offered to adjust teams possibilities to their roles. For example, ghosts can move to any room, while hunters can move only to one closes to the one they’re currently in.
To implement boosts. Game master can have a number of boosts for both teams that he can distribute during the round, before teams announce their positions. One spread, game master can’t change position of boosts. Like protection for hunters or “add one team member to the room”. Per round game master can display all or some boosts. Players don’t know where the boosts are. Game master announces if a boost had been activated in the room.
I believe that second option has more potential in terms of immersiveness and fun, because this session was more aluve and players were active with thematic jokes. Additionally this option doesn’t have major gameplay issues like 1:1 situation in the simple version. Even if we’re making a video chat game, it can be something more than just party games. The only thing I’m concerned about is that we can omit using video, which is good from one point since you’re still able to play it even if you don’t have/don’t want to use a camera. On the other hand, such omitting may be considered as project rules violation in some point. That’s why we’re also thinking about allowing team members use some code gestures to give hints to each other.
Today we’re sharing our findings and ideas. This is how our Miro board looks like now:
As you can see, our first preferences were 2 ideas
Unfortunately the discussion didn’t go far from that. Some of the other ideas, like classical words game, turned out to be too simple and already existing. While pitching ideas, Trini brought to our attention the following idea:
To us it seemed as the most relevant option, because it was something new and didn’t refer to any existing party games. We all agreed that this one should be developed further and we need to come up with some contest.
I came up with the following proposition:
The idea was accepted so the final concept for now looks like this:
We discussed some rules already, for example, the rule “one round – one cell” to force players to constantly change their position and the anount of players in each cell. Discussed the amount of lives, which for now can depend on the amount of players and/or rounds, because there is a risk, that one could be kicked out pretty fast till the very end of the session, which can be relatively long if the number of people is big.
Another important question was that the game we were discussing so far would work great as a digital one. But we should adapt the mechanics to non-digital to meet the brief. Where I offered the following, which is settles as working option for now:
Final thing that we got to discuss is the setting, which due to the spooky season, was collectively agreed to be ghosts and ghost hunters. The grid will serve as as a haunted mansion with cells as rooms. That would make the game more immersive and it would be more interesting to name rooms instead of plain numbers.
That are our achievements of the week. I think we’ve reached our weekly goal and can work further on developing and testing the concept. I personally believe that the game will look great in digital as well, and such duality reaches my personal interest in research over adapting digital games to board ones and vice versa.
Objective – create a non-digital video-chat game in 4 weeks
Research:
I decided to start my research from several examples provided for us during the session, so that we could analyze and get some ideas for our project.
Case 1: 20 questons
Has answerer and questioners
Answerer chooses subject/object
Questionsers have 20 questions to guess
Answers only yes or no
If a questioner wins, they become an answerer for the next round
Variant: ‘Animal, plant, mineral’
Answerer tells whether the subject belongs to the animal, vegetable or mineral kingdom.
I find this variant more as an option in terms of interest as such classification makes the game much more variable and fun. Because it adds player’s associations as an element of gameplay. I believe that having some odd (posibbly mixing) categories and contextualization is preferable for modern gaming styles as well as for our potential project. The element of creativity is introduces and allows the players to ‘break the ice’ and get to know each other’s way of thinking, what leads to creating bonds. One of the purposes of a social game.
Similar approach in terms of creativity is revealed in games like ‘Crocodile’, which is an example of an acted charade. Such genre is one of the best options for a video chat game so far as it includes action rather than just sitting, what is especially relevant for quarantine times.
Case 2: I spy…
Guessing game. Aim is to guess the object. “I spy with my little eyebsomething beginning with…” In some variants can be supported by various questions.
For such game type what I find the most perspective variant for a video chat game is I spy something that sounds like. As this element is easy to implement with disable video button and it’s something used relatively rare. So it is quite an element of novelty.
Also the article about the game introduced using photogrаphic cards for cheching cognitive functions, which might be interesting to develop. For example in the form of associative cards like in the game “Mysterium”, where they are used for guessing a killer, location and weapon. Thus our current project doesn’t allow using special equipment, potentially a video chat game using an associative card game set could be a nice ‘I spy’ variant.
Case 3: Six degrees of Kevin Bacon
Aims to find the shortest path between an orbitrary actor and prolific actor Kevin Bacon.
The reason why I wanted to point out this example is because it shows how various and unexpected things can be used as a game base. The game is based on the theory of 6 acquaintances which resulted in a non-guessing linking party game. I don’t think this particular gameplay is applicable in our situation, but encourages to research similar phenomena and adapt them for gameing processes.
Having analyzed these and several other examples, I came to the conclusion that our project should be approached from the point of adaptation. By that I mean using the core idea of some more-less classic party game that will be adapted and reworked, while adding a unique feature to make our game stand out. It is simolar with charater desing, where you must preserve some classic elements for viewers to still understand, what type of character they see (like kind or evil) and make the design unique at the same time. Let me illustrate that with the following example.
Above I mentioned the acted charade Crocodile. Aim is to guess the word, where a pleyer explains it via movements and gestures. A pretty much simple gameplay which was reworled and developed by another game “Honey mushrooms”. It uses the same gesture-guess principle, but takes it to another level by implementing a double-guess element. The game set up 3 role types: doctor, patien and hallucinations. Hallucinations know the word and category and show clues to the patient, who on their turn mustbexplain what he sees, so that the doctor must guess the category chosen by hallucinations. The doctor can’t see hallucinations. So we have 2 players guessing at the same time. Also, what the game does is introducing some kind of setting, allowing minimal role play.
(gameplay example)
Thus the game is not very applicable for video chat, the developed original concept and approach to develop classical show&guess game can be pretty much used as a reference for our project. The approach worth trying ang experimenting with.
To conclude, when discussing our ideas in the team, I’d be suggesting some outcomes from this research, such as:
including odd or fun categories
introducing elements of associations or personal creativity
our game concept can start with reworking of a classical party game. It will provide us with more understandable rules, so that there’s less tike needed to get into the game for the majority of people. At the same time the element of novelty would make our game stand out and be unique (as in Honey muchrooms example)
Some kind of overal concept or topic should be included instead of an abstract game. Can include role play element. This will make the game more fun and immersive.
Next we’re going to discuss the ideas with the team and brainstorm the working concept to achieve our weekly goal – come up with the final idea. Stay tuned!
