Man Eating Plant Board Game
Team Size : 3 Role : Board Game Creator, Designer, Play tester What I Did : Created and printed Board Game Parts and Placed other team members art onto the pieces. Designed core mechanics with team members and balanced user interactions. Play Tested with Industry professionals at elm city games. The Idea : The man eating plant board game was a game where players play as a man eating plant and had to grow out their roots to eat humans around a hex based map. Each turn, players would gain two movement points to grow their roots and advance around a hex based map. When players grew, they would block off sections of the map forcing other players to be unable to move freely. The Process : This game was one game in an pool of games my group pitched and was chosen based off of its simplicity and strategy elements. With a time constraint of a few weeks the group did not have time for anything complex so we went with this idea. The original idea was just a theme. We wanted to make a game where players were fighting each other as man eating plants and eating humans. What we didn't know was how it would play out. Since the characters were plants we figured it would make sense to have them grow roots and spread around the map. This then leads to plants being able to block other people off of hexes and our first real game test. First Iteration: Our first iteration was a version that didn't work, but helped us get a mechanic to build off of. Players would start on the yellow hexes, and the first to get to the green hex first would win. Players could grow as much as they wanted as long as they had the resources and could block each other. We also had an attack function where players could attack roots. If the root was cut the parts that were cut off would collapse and die. This game did work in a two player space, but once more players were introduced it fell apart. Players would team up on whoever was first. When this happened the first player would get cut and be reverted back to start. All progress made would be lost for that player. This would keep on going in a endless loop with no winner. We tried to make it so you could only attack what was near you, but then players in the middle would be at a big disadvantage. The idea was interesting, but in practice it was flawed. Second Iteration: This lead us to back up and rethink a few things. We made a bigger board and changed the mechanics where players could not kill each other. Instead we turned it into a race. Players had to gather the most humans and block other people from capturing them. Playable But... : This game ran smoothly and was fully playable. We even had art to represent eaten villages and roots. The main problem was that it did not give players meaningful choices. Players were always in their own sections of the map. What we wanted players to feel was accomplishment and frustration as players fight over humans and block off each others path. This was not the case at all. Players always had an village near them and the map was wide open so players felt like they always had a option. Everyone farmed in their own area and it if everyone played optimal the last player would always win. This iteration did help test the mechanic, but the player interactions fell short of what we wanted players to feel. Ideas To Improve: After this iteration the group came up with a few things we could test for future development. The core problems we saw were that players always had a option and that players could not move fast to block people. Currently we are planning on changing the maps and goals to better enforce a struggle for food. The map would have one village like the first iteration. This village would be located far back and in a mountain range with twists and turns. Tight corridors will force people to fight over key points and interact. With one common goal in mind they would need to snake through everyone. To give players more options in movement, we were thinking of a currency system. In this system, players will have a bank full of roots. Each turn, players could spend roots to move forward. One movement would cost one root, each additional movement would cost one more root on top of the previous cost. So if a player would want to move they would need to first pay one root, if they want to move one more root, then they would pay two for a total of three roots. The extra roots not going on the map would go in a discard pile. Players would need to be careful not to run out of roots, but at the same time be able to move as much as possible. We also would add a recycling system. This is so players don't run out of moves completely. End Goal: The goal for future iterations will be to refine the movements of players and to create the meaningful iteration we are looking for. We want players to be getting in each others was as they all try to achieve their goals. Though other versions have failed, they were still necessary to get to the point we are now at. |