Horses Are Nature's Dominos

Its been a while since my last post and this space I believe will be used for an update on my recent goings on.

So now our group projects are in full swing, we are making assets for our game 'Circuitry absurdity' and we are slowly making progress. Having created a board game version of the game, to strip back the visual niceness and concentrate on actual game play, the game has been adapted in many various ways. From the original 'Drag a piece and place it to make a circuit', we now have a randomly generated 'piece' pile, a points system, various appliances to connect to each valueing differently dependant where they are on the game board, 'hazards' (for example water). A recent iteration that changed game play entirely was the 'bridge piece'. Where originally your circuit could not cross wires, this piece opens up multiple options for the player to extend play time and to incorporate more of the appliances during the game. Although this concept may make the game more confusing for the child (after all it is a key stage 1 game) this new tile creates various issues in the way of 'possible' and 'illegal' moves. On a computer game these 'ilegal' moves can easily be found and error message appear however in the board game, inexperienced players may forget or not see where an illegal move has been made thus rendering the game impossible to complete. Iterations are being incorporated with new concepts at the same time taking concepts out when they don't work. Using the '15 minute method' as I like to call it, we can test game 'updates' quicky and efficiently without loss of vast amounts of time.
Screen shots or scans of our board game may appear at a later date on my blog, however keeping everything in uni, I don't have access at all times...

To practise the 15 minute method a board game concept for an off-line RTS style game was provided with a hexagonal board and a quick set of rules for movement and firing.
Initially, playing the game was required to understand the rules and get to grips with all possibilities and problems that might arise within the pre existing rule sets.
A move, move turn, turn and shoot card were originally available to the player, each turn consists of the player laying one of their cards and then in the aforementioned order, the turn plays out. (so players who laid their move card take their turn before players who laid their move turn card and so on and so forth)
As we were working in groups, we first came up with iterations to edit the movement sets to help or hinder players when attempting to 'shoot' each other. This meant easier movement but also meant that when the players went to shoot each other one could more easily step out of the way. This made the game more tactical and also meant that players were more inclined to be offensive than defensive.
Another iteration was a 'Sniper card'. We changed the 'Fire' card so that it could only reach 5 hex's and then made this 'One use' card that could span the entirety of the game board. This opened up problems of players being killed instantly when the game starts however as they could not avoid being shot (as they were all facing each other to begin with as a tactical ploy to get the first kill)
In an effort to stop this instant kill issue we created 'Spawn points' these were designated hex's that when you begin instantly face you the opposite ways to your opponents, thus you need to turn and move before you can kill anything.
This process went on for a little while however we managed to iterate 5 or 6 new concepts into the game (some better than others) relatively quickly in around an hour.
The 15 minute method is extremely useful to not become attached to the game itself as you havn't spent hours trying to iterate a single concept which may turn out to be a flaw/failure.
Once again scans and images are not currently available... I may be able to edit them in later...

Along side Uni work I have had an offer for a bit of extra design work. This opportunity arises from the use of this blog! I have been in contact with Games producer, Mo Touman who has given a brief for me to consider, creating concepts that might eventually go into production if the idea has any possibilities behind it.
So hopefully I could be involved in my own game concept coming to life in the near future which is very exciting. I have always been the player of games, getting the opportunity to finally be the creator is astounding. I joined my uni course looking for this possibility, for it to come so soon is a god send. I'm itching to get involved in this new brief.

Well these were my recent, memorable and notable activities for the week and so rounds off my blog nicely.

Oh and the name of this blog isn't so random...
http://www.qwantz.com/comics/comic2-228.png

Ross, Out.