Board Game Trailer

Here is a 15 second trailer for "Our Lord and Foe". Enjoy!

Park Sketching and Game Ideas

1. Boats by the water

 Idea #1: Stranded on an island you are provided with only a single boat. You know that this island is too far for any small boat to make it somewhere useful. Will you build a bigger, better boat? Will you risk the journey anyways? Or will you stay on the island and make it your new home? Danger lurks behind every decision...

2. Crane, 3. Three Trees

 Idea #2: Coming home from work you take a detour to avoid construction going on downtown. From a distance you see the crane poking into the skyline. You think about the city's future, its inhabitants, you wonder how many more giant buildings they'll add to the already overpopulated streets. Suddenly you hear loud rustling all around you, but you can't tell where it's coming from. You walk quicker, but the noise escalates into a cacophony of noise--and then silence. Until the crane falls. You only have a second to look at the crane before it crashes down, are those vines pulling it down? You think, "Surely not"...until a vine wraps around your ankle and pulls you down as well.

Idea #3: Legend has it there are three brother trees that will tell you your fortune if you're lucky enough to find them when they sprout. Join in the race to find the Brother Trees and be the first to have your fortune told!

4. Bridge

Idea #4: Land has all but disappeared, and bridges connect all the buildings. You are the bridge patrol, racing around the great expanses of water, ensuring safe crossing on bridges, and keeping bandits from lurking in the shadows and attacking passing citizens.

"Our Lord and Foe" Print and Play!

Game Illustration

Looking for a riveting battle against an evil lord that has taken over your life as a serf? Fight for your freedom in "Our Lord and Foe", a print and play by me! 

Inside the downloadable PDF you'll find everything you need to play the game--except a friend and a die! So get together, print this out, and have an awesome time kicking an evil lord's ass. 

Click here for the downloadable PDF!

Playtest Questions and 10.17.14 Changelog

Here are a set of questions I devised to ask play testers after they have played the rough version of my game, "Our Lord and Foe". I wanted to leave the questions vague enough for the player to not be influenced by the phrasing of the question, but specific enough to still get the information I'm looking for. Without further ado:

• Did you have trouble understanding how to play?
• Do you think the game is lacking anything?
• Do you find any parts of the game extraneous or unnecessary?
• Do you feel like the game is balanced?
• If you could change one thing about the game, what would it be?
• How do you feel about the theme? Is it cohesive?
• Is there anything in the game you wish there was more of?
• What is unique about the game?
• What is generic about the game?
• Would you play this game again?
• How much do aesthetics impact your view of a game?
• How do you feel about the writing/story based parts of the game (ex: character blurbs)?
• Are there any loopholes? Does anything seem unintentional/like a bug?
• What are your overall impressions of the game?

After a couple playtests I've already got a whole slew of changes to make. The first batch of these changes is as follows:

1. Rules
• Players now start with 2 Serf Action Cards instead of 5
• "Character Action Cards" have been changed to "Serf Action Cards" in the rules
•  Changed "Power" to "Attack" 
• Removed mention of tools from the rules
• Added rule that players must flip over a Lord Action Card each time they attack the lord
• Added rule that serfs must use their own energy, it cannot be shared. If Serf 1 has 1 energy, they may only use that serf once.
• Added 2 rounds to the game
• Other small wording changes
2. Character Cards
• Balanced character stats to define roles more, ex: Serfs with high attack now have low energy, making them useful attack cards. Serfs with lower attack have more energy so that they may spend more time gathering resources, crafting weapons, and organizing attacks
• Added "Character Card" near the top of each card for clarification
• Changed any mention of "power" to "attack"
3. Lord Cards
• Added 10 HP to each Lord
• Added "Lord Card" on each card for clarification
• Changed some attack stats
• Changed any mention of "power" to "attack"
4. Lord Action Cards
• Balanced number of different effects
• Made more HP attack based cards
5. Serf Action Cards
1. Removed a card that grated a weapon for one material
6. Game Boards 
• Removing Lord Card board

Cottage Life? Evil Landlord? Fantasy Serfdom?: Developing a Theme

After having chosen "Cottage Life" as my game idea, it's time to develop the theme so that I can unify the idea into one coherent message. As a refresher, this is the basic idea of the game, although many of these mechanics will see changes as I develop the theme:

• players begin as pioneers on separate plots of land
• each player must fight to start their farm, fend off beasts, and build their homes
• tool based game, all actions are complete through the building of and using of tools
• ex: build axe first ->able to get wood, can be burned for cooking or warmth, but houses made out of wood aren't as sturdy as a house made with stone gathered with a pick axe
• players are only allowed a certain number of tools (don't know why yet, maybe explained by lore)
• would like the game to be story based

So to start off I should briefly explain what I think the game has in store for audiences. What do I think the theme should be? Here I've got a paragraph that explains the essence of the game in more specific detail than my first iteration of the idea:

A magical overlord has taken hold of a feudal manor, and in doing so now owns all its serfs. Working together, the serfs must escape the tyrannical grasp of the evil force by using the labor skills they have learned over the years. This is a story about removing a dictator-like force from ruling over the lives of innocent workers. 

So at its essence the game can be described in the following concept statement: 

"Freedom is inherent, evil that limits this freedom must be destroyed"

I think this covers a lot of the ideals in the game like good vs. evil, righteousness, and determination.

Now clearly the idea of serfdom leads the game into a specific time period. The setting is the high middle ages, more specifically I would like to set the time at around 1250 in central England which saw a huge population boost before the onset of the Black Death 100 years later, but was ridden with poverty. This was a time where serfdom, essentially a form of slavery, ran rampant through Western Europe. Serfs were laborers bound to a lord's property, and once a person became a serf they remained so for the rest of their lives, passing on the status of being a serf to their children. Serfs were afforded a few more luxuries than slaves would: a home for their family, a plot of land to farm, and the ability to buy and sell goods in the local villages. Freedom could be bought, but few serfs would ever be able to afford the price. 

The art style must lend itself to exploring the contrasts of freedom and servitude. I must ask myself what in my game should represent freedom and what should represent the bondage of slavery. In actions that the serfs make, I want to express freedom. With each move a player is able to make as a serf they should feel they are heading towards freedom. Conversely, with each move made by the lord the players should feel more restricted. 

For the players' actions I want the art to seem bright, clear, and colorful.

For the lord's actions I want the art to reflect a darker, dirtier, and more menacing theme. 

These color schemes should seem to oppose each other in many ways. On one hand I want the serf's colors to reflect nature, and especially nature during the Fall since this is when they will be harvesting Summer crops that they will be able to both sell and eat, making it a prosperous time. On the other hand the lord's colors show the more unnatural side of life. If I want to express freedom as being natural and inherent, then the logical step should be to represent restriction in an unnatural way. 

In order to balance the two very different color schemes, I intend to make the lord's theme dominant and the serf's theme subordinate. In doing so, the small pops of the serf's theme will stand out more and hopefully enhance the victories players will reach as they progress through the game. 

Stylistically I'd like to make the game less about realism and more about a caricature of society. I want the game to be approachable by various audiences, and I've found that darker, more realistic looking games tend to put consumers off as not everyone wants to play a super serious game. To be successful, the game should strike a balance between the whimsy of a stylized cartoon and the very simple but hefty notion of freedom versus servitude. 

All of these aspects should now hopefully come together to create a game that is constantly reminding its players that freedom is at the core of everyone, and to gain it back after years of servitude is a huge victory that one should feel proud of. 

Riskopoly

Risk and Monopoly, historically known as two games that take ages to play. The task? Combine the two games, ensure it only takes about 20 minutes to play, but use as many pieces as possible from each game. It's a daunting task, but one that my classmate and I took on with a great deal of bravery.

Combining the boards

When starting out we first determined that we should use both boards. We briefly attempted to use the full Risk board, but decided for the sake of brevity and simplicity to only play with Europe, Africa, and North and South America. Similarly, we only used two sides of the Monopoly board, from "Go" to "Jail", and treating that as a loop.

Initial Soldier set up

Keeping in mind we needed to use as many pieces as possible, we allowed the prices of properties on the Monopoly board to actually be rewarded to the player that landed on it. We took all of the positive Community Chest and Chance cards out, making sure there were opportunities to lose the money you made as well. We kept the Monopoly player pieces in play as normal, using the shoe and battleship to represent ourselves on the Monopoly Board.

In progress game.

We also used the soldiers, horsemen, and cannons in their usual fashion representing armies owned by each player. Initially we tried to evenly divvy up territories and put a soldier each on them. In doing so, however, the game seemed to go too fast. We then decided to only use 10 soldiers each to begin the game, leaving some territories open to claiming if you had enough soldiers to support the move. In order to gain more soldiers, a player would have to buy a Monopoly house for $100 and then roll on their next turn to see how many soldiers they could place in a territory that had a house.

With all the initial setting up done, we could finally play the game fully. The rules and gameplay are as follows:

Goal:
Take over one entire continent with your soldiers.

Starting/Set-up

1. Each player rolls to see who goes first
2. Fold the Risk board so that you only see Europe, Africa, North and South America. Place this over top of the Monopoly board so that you can only see from "Go" to "Free Parking". 
3. Give each player 10 soldiers, the first player may place a soldier on any territory. The second player may then place a soldier on the same continent as the first player. This continues until all soldiers have been placed. 
4. Place a silver Monopoly piece on the "Go" square on the monopoly board.

During Each Turn:

1. Roll one white die. Move your silver Monopoly piece the number of spaces indicated on the die.
2. Award the player with the cash amount indicated at the bottom of the property on the board. If they landed on a Chance or Community Chest space, draw one of the cards and complete the action. If the player has no money, ignore the card.
3. If the player has $100, they may purchase a house. They may then place the house on any territory they currently have soldiers on. 
4. If the player has a house they bought in a previous turn, they may roll the red Monopoly die (with the Monopoly man and bus on it). If they roll a 1, 2, or 3, they may have 1, 2, or 3 soldiers respectively to put on the territory with the house. If they roll the Monopoly man, they may not have any soldiers. If they roll the bus they may move any one soldier to another territory on the board. NOTE: You must have a soldier in your territories at all times. If you leave no soldiers in a territory, you lose both the territory and any houses it may have built on it.
5. The player may attack an opponent. Standard Risk rules apply. If you do not know standard Risk rules for attacking, keep reading. 
1. The attacker may roll with up to 3 red dice, each representing a soldier in a territory.
2. The defender may roll with up to 2 white dice, each also representing a soldier in the territory being attacked.
3. The winner is the player with the single highest die. EX: The attacker rolls a 2, 1, and 4. The defender rolls a 2 and a 5. The defender wins because 5 is larger than 4. One of the attacker's soldiers is destroyed. If the battle ends in a tie, the defender is victorious and may destroy the attacker's soldier. 
4. You may continue to battle as long as players have enough soldiers to attack or defend with. 
5. If the attacker is successful, they may move soldiers into the territory, leaving one behind if they wish to keep their initial territory.
6. Once all of these steps have been completed, the player's turn is over and the next player may do the same.
7. The game is over once one continent is fully owned by one player. 

Notes:

• Only use Europe, Africa, South America, and North America
• You should have 4 white dice, 3 red dice, and one red Monopoly dice (used in fast play in Monopoly)
• Once you reach "Free Parking" on Monopoly you may return to "Go"
• Collect $200 when passing "Go" as usual
• If you land on "Jail" on Monopoly, do not go to jail. 

In all, the game should only take about 10-20 minutes. Starting with 10 soldiers leaves most of the territories covered, but still allows for empty ones to easily be taken over once houses have been bought after a few turns each. The game is surprisingly fun, especially since there are many strategies possible to help a player win, and with the game being so short you should be able to try out all kinds of strategies! 

Happy Riskopolying! 

Brainstorming Board Games

Brainstorming is one of the most difficult but rewarding parts of building concepts and ideas and bringing them to fruition. There are numerous ways people go about the process, but I like good old fashioned writing and stream of consciousness. I've always found that letting my mind wander freely allows it to see things in a new light and hopefully helps come up with original ideas.

Over the past few weeks I've been stretching my mind to come up with both a game I'll enjoy making and a game that people will enjoy playing. The first and easiest step is coming up with themes, I have tons of them, and they always coincide with my personal interests. For example here's a short list of some of my personal favorite themes for games:

• Plants (growing, taking care of, etc.)
• Circuses
• Cottages and Pioneers
• Discovery! (vague, but enticing)
• Desert Challenges
• Challenging work places, challenging (annoying) customers
• Cats (I can never resist)
• Bar tending
• 90's Skateboarding 
• Fashion
• Simple Color Making
• Farming in France
• Becoming an Arsonist
• Monster Themed Bakery
•  Grocery Shopping Madness
• Clown Cars
• Leading A Jetset Life
• Sun vs. Moon
• Be The Best Bearded Lady

Well, those are all over the place so I need to find ways to narrow the themes down into a playable mechanic. Mechanics are a tough cookie to crack, too simple and a game might be boring, too complex and most people won't want to take the time to sit down and understand it. My goal is to find a mechanic that's simple enough to be easy and quick to understand, but is also varied enough to allow for emergent game play. Why is this important? Games should carry replay value, if my customer isn't willing to play the game a second, third, or fourth time then I've not made the game play out in an interesting enough way. Here I explored some generic game play mechanics:

Single Mechanics, player actions do not interact with other players:

• dice rolling
• random card drawing
• landing on random spaces
• choice between unknown variables
• points based earning systems
• rewards for strategy

Player Interaction Mechanics:

• secret sabotage
• sharing space with other players
• weapon cards/pieces
• non-aggressive interactions
• stealing
• evasion mechanics, players should be able to escape consequences through strategy

Methods Of Play (objects):

• positive and negative cards
• rolling dice for decisions
• bonus rolls (product of strategic decisions)
• begin players with equal or different abilities

How Can I Allow For Strategy?

• players can't impact each other, they can only impact gameplay
• giver players opportunities for informed decisions
• vary options enough so that players are making varied decisions
• numerous and small impacts as opposed to few but large impacts

While these are nowhere near expansive lists, they're a good starting point for developing some solid base mechanics that I can easily outfit with a theme I'm really interested in, or that I think will mesh well with the mechanic. So here I'll apply some of my mechanics:

Plant Growing (yea, super exciting): 

• stacking plant parts together, parts are both negative and positive, you may affect other players' plants (sabotage)
• magnetic plant pieces (just how they can fit together)
• positive: fertilizer, better dirt, larger pots?
• negative: over watering, no sun, drought

*Carnival/Circus Game:

• players are presented with jigsaw pieces
• they must earn the correct jigsaw pieces to complete their puzzle
• players may trade puzzle pieces
• upon completing the puzzle the player kicks the other circuses out of town and becomes the reigning circus
• OR it could be played on a town to town basis, slowly building up your carnival caravan

*Cottage Life:

• players begin as pioneers on separate plots of land
• each player must fight to start their farm, fend off beasts, and build their homes
• tool based game, all actions are complete through the building of and using of tools
• ex: build axe first ->able to get wood, can be burned for cooking or warmth, but houses made out of wood aren't as sturdy as a house made with stone gathered with a pick axe
• players are only allowed a certain number of tools (don't know why yet, maybe explained by lore)
• would like the game to be story based

Discovery!:

• players are researchers looking for the cure to a mysterious disease
• the game is set in the rainforest, researchers must gather plant and bug specimens
•  goes through month long cycles
• finding rarer bugs and plants lead to more discovery and better chances of finding a cure
• researchers may be sent home with illness, taking them out of the game for a round or so
• they may attempt to cure their illness and hopefully return sooner

Ad Lib Based Game:

• the goal is to form a story together
• or to create an abstract image together
• generate points through number of consecutive pieces a player is able to put down
• would have to have tons and tons of cards

Cactus:  

• you're a cactus!
• similar in mechanics to the discovery game
• survive from week to week
• make it through droughts 
• collect enough water to make it through 
• defend self from creatures, grow new kinds of quill things?

IT Mayhem:

•  game is based on helping customers with queries 
• each player is allowed a default response of "have you tried turning it off and on again?"
• when using this response players are able to roll to see if they are successful (D&D-ish)
• players will earn points in order to learn more IT training, they will gather "response cards" that will help them resolve problems, without the right response card players are unable to help the customer 
• player can earn points through successfully helping customers (although this would only produce random outcomes in the beginning)
• allow players to bounce back from tough starts by offering odd jobs like cleaning, being a clown at birthday parties, and other lame jobs

*Elemental Cats:

• cats have been discovered to be the rulers of the known universe after cat wars have raged on in the skies above earth
• humans must prevent the destruction of earth and find a way to get the cats to go back to a passive ruling
• the game pits player against player, one playing as cats and the other as the humans 
• cats have god abilities, but humans have the entirety of the human race behind them (armies, nukes, etc.), the skills should be evenly balanced, and the cats are not invincible 

*Bar Tending:

• make it through the night as a bar tender
• earn tips, handle customer problems, drink (but don't get drunk)
• alternating rounds of bar tending, play as customers when you are not the bar tender
• the bar tender pulls cards that present problems
• the customer uses their hand of cards to decide how they want the bartender to handle their problem
• ex: the customer has just been broken up with, the bartender has the option to console the customer, give them a drink on the house, or hit on them. As the bartender places their decision card down (either an A, B, or C), the customer also places their card down to show what they would like to happen (A, B, or C card). When the two coincide, the bartender is awarded with a successful sale. 

90's Skateboarding Game:

• I actually have no idea, but if this isn't the best board game theme you've ever heard then you're a liar. 

(*: denotes a preferred idea)

There's a brief overview of just a few of my ideas. It's pretty overwhelming right now, but there are a few in there that I see as having a great deal of potential, especially when they get developed into more concrete ideas and mechanics. 

So long for now.

Print and Play Analysis: Writer's Block

Ever wanted to write a book? Too lazy? Too busy? Well, if you've got half an hour on your hand then you might be looking to play Writer's Block, the game where the goal is to write the best developed story!

The best way to look at and analyze this particular game is to understand the objects it contains: cards. All of the other mechanics rely on this foundation part of the game. Each card has an attribute that can reward a player with either ink, used when playing a card, or a writing cube (a personal token) which can be placed on a plot card. One of these attributes can then affect the state of the card.

For example: If a card is blue with a blue and a black dot in the top left, then the card can complete two different actions. The player may want to play the card in order to place a writing cube on the blue plot, however if they don't have any ink then they cannot play it. Instead the player must burn (discard) the card, collecting all of the available ink (the dots) from it. 

Player's hand at the beginning of a round.

These then are the two states possible for the cards: turned into a writing cube or burnt into ink. As you can see, the states of these objects are very important to the playing of the game, as they allow you to do the only two things that will let you win.

There are, of course, other objects in the game. There is the plot card which is the space players put their writing cubes on. During the "Edit" phase of the game, players are rewarded for having the most tokens on a plot card. They may be rewarded in ink, but they may also be rewarded in idea tokens, a form of currency used to buy bonus cards. These bonus cards, found in the "Brainstorming Area" can be used to complete various actions like adding their writing cube to a plot, erasing a writing cube from a plot, etc.

Well, it's clear that there are a lot of different options when it comes to these objects. And though there are few of them, they can result in many different outcomes. The operative actions like burning a card, spending an idea token, or placing a writing cube on a plot are what lead into the resultant actions, a much more complex list of results that are produced because of the operative actions.

Some of these operative actions are as below, as are their resultant actions:

Burning a card: Player earns allotted number of black dots at the top left of the card. Card is discarded.
Burning a card which is related to a plot on which you have the majority of writing cubes: Player earns allotted number of black and colored dots at the top left of the card. Card is discarded.
Spend ink: Player is allowed to play a card. The card remains in front of the player. A writing cube is placed on the specified plot card.
Spend an idea token: Player may purchase card.
A bought card is played: Player may move a writing cube, add a writing cube, or remove a writing cube from plot cards. 

With so many possibilities in resultant actions, Writer's Block leaves a lot of open room for gameplay and different choices. Now, keep in mind that all of these things are occurring within a few discrete spaces on the playing field. The list below this images spells these spaces out.

The game space as visualized by the developer of the game.

Erased: A place for cards that have been removed from the game.
Plot Cards: The area to place down the writing cubes that help win the game.
Idea Deck: Cards that can be drawn and distributed for the player's hand.
Discard: The discard deck.
Ink Tokens: A place for ink tokens to gather.
Idea Tokens: A place for the idea tokens to gather.
Brainstorm area: The shop from which players can buy cards. 

One of the play spaces: the Plot Cards.

 These 2D spaces make up the entirety of the game's magic circle, leaving little room for question or confusion. Once the game has been set up once it can easily be set up again and again as the game moves on. Don't worry though, because the game itself does require some skill and cunning that will hopefully throw your opponents off and help you win the game.

A player's idea tokens, ink tokens, and writing cubes.

This is where you and your genius brain come in, as you start the game you must choose your hand for the next round in a draft format, meaning that you may pick one card from a hand but then must hand it off to the next player so that they may pick a card from that set. Here you must decide which plot you might go for, which cards you think are disposable, and which cards you think your opponents might be in need of. With the right strategy you could pick all the right cards and leave your opponents high and dry with the worst picks of the litter. This kind of challenge will help you weed out the good from the bad, the beneficial to the wasteful. A player should leave no stone unturned if they wish to make the right strategic move.

Now, there is some chance involved in the game, but only just enough to keep things interesting. Keep in mind that your opponents may have cards they bought during the brainstorming phase, and they could choose to use them against you. This is of course out of your control! Hopefully if you're making the right decisions you will be able to easily recover from an unexpected blow. In this way the game proves to be versatile, and rewards players for skilled gameplay, something that can be important to many players.

In my opinion Writer's Block is a well balanced game. With lots of opportunities to turn the tide back in your favor, like earning ink and purchasing cards to benefit you, there are many possibilities for play and numerous outcomes. With multiple outcomes comes interest in replaying the game. I've found that a majority of print and play games suffer from such an imbalance that it wouldn't be fun to play it again because you know how to break the game, and no one wants to play a game that doesn't challenge them to reach a goal in some way. Balance also means that players can feel like they are equally matched with each other and that each unique way to play can be effective, rather than one cut and dry method that always works well.

If I had to critique the game I would say the instructions are sometimes difficult to understand. Had the game not been explained to me by someone else beforehand I think it would have taken me at least one full playing of the game to understand most of the rules. For example: the rules state that the Martian plot card allows the winner of that card to erase two cards from the game. The instructions don't explain why this is different than simply discarding two cards, instead they could have explained that the erase pile remains for the entirety of the game, every round, so they cannot come back into play whereas discarded cards are shuffled back in for the next round. Of course, this is a minor disagreement, so overall the developer of this game should feel confident that they have found success!

Print and Play Games

In an effort to learn more about the nature of print and play games, their design, set-up, and requirements, I played three different games. Each of these games has very different mechanics that make for three varied experiences, some bad, some good. Here are the results.

Bad Grandmas, mid-play action

Bad Grandmas is a game featuring some very sassy grandmas who battle it out in, presumably, their bad ass nursing home. They are all equipped with weapons and funny remarks. I was really excited to play this game because I liked the humor involved. Unfortunately, as me and the other players began to play it seemed as though the game is based only around luck. This wouldn't be so bad, but I feel as though the game goes under a more strategic guise. Each grandma has a specific value attached to her. One grandma at the beginning of the round is chosen to set the rule. Our particular grandma's particular rule specified that the person with the lowest total score would win. However, after having been dealt random hands of cards it was clear that no amount of strategy would save a player from their worst cards. We left our grandmas in favor of finding a more suitably strategic game.

A player making bank in the cutthroat restaurant scene.

What we found was Delivery, my personal favorite pick of the lot. The game has a lot going for it--it's a relatively unique concept, it's mostly easy to understand, and the art actually isn't bad. Its mechanic revolves around random rolls of dice, but that is balanced with strategic choices in price of food and investments in either food quality, advertisements, or speedy deliveries. While "Delivery" is, for the most part, balanced, there is one major flaw. If a player chooses to price their meals at $2 they will get +1 added to their roll to see who will get to take the food order. Anyone who prices their meal at $5, however, will have -2 taken from their roll. In this way, at least with only a 6 sided die, it is nearly impossible to win a roll with your prices set at $5. A more balanced option would be to take -1 from the order pick up roll, and -1 from delivery speed. Otherwise a player offering expensive food will never even see the delivery stage.

Playing Pennywise as Sugar, the (obviously) best character to play as.

All hyped up on our restaurant success (or lack thereof), we moved on to Pennywise, a game based around using your wits and your coins to run your opponents out of their money. While this game was simple, its stardom came in its balance. Each character card offers you a different starting combination of coins, allowing for very different gameplay choices. The idea of the game is that each player takes a turn putting down a coin in the center of the table, or the pot, and they may remove any amount of coins that is equal to one less than the coin they put in. So if a player puts in a nickel they can remove 4 pennies. I think this game's strength lies in its ability to be played so many ways, and thinking about the combinations of coins that will add up to one less than yours is a nice mini brain exercise. I'd conclude, though, that even though this game was balanced it didn't hold interest for to terribly long.

I'm surprised at how much I ended up enjoying playing these games. While they didn't hold my interest as well as other non-printable board games have in the past, they could easily fill a boring lull, or a woeful financial situation.

Pedestrian Mayhem!: A Real World Observation

 Observing the real world is an important part of making games believable. The decisions players are offered should, in most realistic games, fall in line with what a real person would do. When players are offered decisions that they wouldn't have made in the real world a disconnect happens and any previous immersion might be lost.

It's a simple observation, but I decided to watch people cross the road. Crossing roads safely is something that has been ingrained in most people's minds since they were children, so I wanted to see how that played out in the real world.

This presentation covers all of my observations!

Rewards and Games

Rewards are one of the best aspects of gameplay because they offer an extra aspect to the goal of most games: to win. Winning by itself is already a great reward in the eyes of many, but a game designer must ask themselves, "what's going to keep my players coming back to my game?". More often than not the answer to that question is simply a greater reward, something that can either positively affect the player's impact in the game, or something that the player can use outside of the magic circle of the game world (money, prizes, etc.).

The Sims Scouts- by Roudoudou Hirons via Flickr

For me rewards should come frequently and in small doses. I love simulator games and because those often don't have any specific goal or way to end the game, game designers have to keep the player in the game by giving them smaller rewards. In The Sims players are rewarded in many ways with job promotions, in game currency to buy better houses and furniture, and even a more points based system that rewards players for reaching certain life goals with their sims, allowing them to unlock better stats, if you will, for their sims (not having to use the bathroom, sleep, or even eat as often). This system creates small and quickly achievable goals alongside larger, more long term goals. These smaller goals feed the player's drive to reach the goal that might seem like it will take a more significant amount of time to achieve.

Pollination by Riccardo Cuppini via Flickr 

Another game I've come to love, and let's keep in mind this is a judgement free zone, is Plant Tycoon. Yea, you read right, I love Plant Tycoon, a game based solely around cross-pollination and selling plants. Its reward system is excellent: by cross-pollinating any two mature plants, a player is rewarded with a new yield of seeds that create a whole new plant. As you sell plants over time you are able to buy better soil, pesticides, and fertilizer, thus opening up a whole new set of more delicate or exotic plants. This kind of reward mechanic is just subtle enough to let the player feel a more natural success, almost as if you were cultivating a real nursery of difficult plants. I think for many players, at least on a casual level, it might be more fun to work towards an abstract goal, creating a really cool plant, than it is to work towards something more concrete like a new set of armor.

Honestly, I'll play any game as long as it has some semblance of a working rewards system, but the finely tuned rewards of sim games will always feel just a little bit better.

Day of the Dead Concept Art

Tonight I'm sharing some concept art I developed recently. After what felt like a hefty amount of research, I felt I wanted to create a small Mexican village celebrating a traditional Día de los Muertos but in the heart of a city. I like to imagine that as time passes and our cities expand, that we will still maintain our heritage around the world!

It was important to me to keep the light warm and inviting, avoiding any preconceived notions that a city has to be dirty or grungy, or bathed in neon light. Both of those options are just as reasonable, of course, but Day of the Dead is about inviting spirits of loved ones into your home and spending time celebrating life. A cozy and inviting atmosphere simply plays on that idea!

Selections From Freshman Year

Last semester was busy, but through a lot of time well spent I made some art I feel was successful, and I think I made a lot of progress!

This was an Academic style drawing done for the last several classes of the semester in my Figure Drawing class. This assignment was challenging in that it was hard to feel motivated sometimes, but rewarding because after all the time spent on it I feel that it was a very successful drawing. This assignment also opened up more of my love of shadows since they're such an integral part of the Academic drawing proccess.

This guy is my buddy, he hangs out in my kitchen on top of the cabinets now, mostly because I just really enjoy seeing him every day. This project, to make a grunt that could appear in a game, was absolutely the most fun out of all of the projects in my 3D class. Because I was so excited about making a character it made the outcome even better. I loved the experience of seeing my ideas change and having to work around obstacles in design, and I'm especially proud of the fact that he turned out 99% like my sketches and ideas, and there's nothing more exciting than that. 

While technically speaking these sketches aren't anything special, they marked something of a turning point for me where perspective was finally starting to make a little sense for me. On top of that, I felt more confident in using values, and while these values don't really work and aren't as expansive or all encompassing as they could have been, it was progress for me. 

Finally, I think this quick sketch rounds off a lot of the things I learned last semester. My values finally started to make more impact, and I'm quite fond of the perspective I've drawn this from. All of this is the culmination of a lot of effort on my part, and even though I've still got a hell of a lot to learn and practice, I'll continue to look back as necessary to help myself see my own improvements rather than the daunting distance I still have to travel. 

Rise of the Tomb Raider: A Great Trailer

Despite being a brand new trailer from the most recent E3 conference, this Rise of the Tomb Raider trailer brings me a great deal of nostalgia because Lara and I have shared a lot of time together. When I was 8 or 9 and still so impressionable, I was watching a lot of bad ass ladies do some bad ass stuff, so between Buffy, Lara, Sailor Moon, and even Halle Berry's Catwoman (yea, yea, I know bad movie, whatever. I adored it.) I was sure I was destined to be one of them. While I haven't had many (any) propositions to fight vampires or bad guys or raid ancient tombs, I've learned to create those instances for myself in other ways.

Playing any Tomb Raider games is one of those ways, so imagine my surprise when I found out that the last Tomb Raider game was less about actual tomb raiding and more about Lara's first experience with life threatening adventures. At first I wasn't excited at the prospect of being Lara at her least skilled, but as soon as this trailer was released for the sequel I understood that the developers were giving players the most intimate look at Lara ever, and that they were giving her humble beginnings more importance. This trailer is skilled in the way it handles Lara's newfound craving for adventure, comparing the mundane life in therapy with the death defying life of finding ancient, lost secrets. For any Tomb Raider fan, these games are, in my opinion, the best way to get to know Lara again, and to reconnect with the wonder we might have had for her the first time around.