So I'm taking a class this semester called "Topic: Games and Interaction." Basically, we read "Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals" (which is an awesome book), talk about game design and whatnot in class, and we have a few projects where we make our own games.

For this first project, we only had to present the concept via something like Powerpoint, and the assignment was "take an everyday activity and turn it into a game-like structure." While I'm confident that my design is solid and workable (it's essentially a variation on a memory game, like Simon), I made my presentation more like a D&D manual or a design document than a good presentation. Anyway, here's the link:

http://userpages.umbc.edu/~scott3/ART389A/GajewskiART389A.1.htm

Since it was a Powerpoint presentation, it works perfectly in IE, whereas in Firefox, for example, the presentation does not appear to be resizable and the images are not where they should be (not much of a problem).

I would appreciate everyone's comments, questions or the like you all may have on it. Thanks!

the concept itself, at first sounded kinda silly, but as i read the rules of play, it got more interesting and turned into something i'd almost kinda like to play. nicely done.

Besides the problems I told ya about in IM, I think it looks like a fun game.

Because CM apparently didn't feel like touching on those problems here, here's the basics:

1) I forgot to include a tie breaker for initial order of players in the multiple players version. I meant to put it in, but it must have slipped.

2) The basic one-player version is pretty "lame." While it's not unplayable as CM suggested (especially if combined with one of the game variations), the meaningful play is definately much more lacking than in the other modes of play.

I stand by my want for a Wii version.

OpenOffice can convert PowerPoint to SWF. You lose any fancy transitions, though.

I don't know, for such a small and simple game it seems rather odd to have a DM. To me it feels like though the game could be fun for the players it's very boring to play the DM. Of course this won't be a problem if it's a computer game.

Can you see what other players do? Because if so, it might actually be better to be the last player in line. Then you can see what does or doesn't work. Thus it would be strange to let the players with the least points go first.
If you can't see what the other players do it's not really a social game, since you're only busy with your own work. Which would be odd for a multiplayer game.

The scoring will probably need balancing. I don't know whether you tested this or not. (which is vital to do before pitching by the way) It might work like this when you play with the minimum amount of doors and relatively smart people. But since you can loose a lot of points while making errors you face the possibility of the game never ending. The fact that you can have a negative score enlarges this possibility. When someone hasn't payed attention well he might make an error or two, get nervous because he's falling behind (with 10 points if the other player got both correct) and start making more errors. He might end up in a downward spiral where it will be hard to get out of. The more doors the chance of this happening increases. I didn't really understand what you meant exactly with the bonus round. But if this can help a player with few points to get back in the race again, it might help keeping the game interesting.


These are kinda the quirks I thought of while reading your idea. It certainly has some origional ideas, even though one could argue it's more or less an expanded version of "Simon Says".

If you want to continue reading after the class. I personally didn't like Rule of Play all that much. It's a pretty boring read. (Though highly recommended everywhere, and certainly usefull)
A more complete and better read is (imho):
Introduction do Game Development
And just a fun quick read on less academic level:
A Theory of Fun for Game Design

ZOOIkes: Thank you for your in-depth response!



You are correct -- if this was played in a real-world setting, it'd probably need to be a gameshow-type environment. A virtual environment, especially with something like the Wii, would likely be ideal.



Yeah, I figured you could see what everyone else was doing, but it shouldn't matter, as 1) it's a memorization game, so it's shown to everyone and 2) not everyone else will necessarily take the same approach as you do. Since proceeding through the doors doesn't require the player to do all the doors in the same turn, or even in the same order, simply watching the other players wouldn't give you as much of an advantage as even watching someone play Simon Says, which in itself is only so helpful. Hopefully that made sense.



Yes -- I realize testing is vital to the development/design of a game, and no, I didn't get the chance to do that before I turned it in, so the points may certainly need to be tweaked. I set them up the way I did to try and stay more true to the "real life activity" which isn't usually something I'd be concerned with except in this project because of its parameters.

I had originally started players off at 10 points, and if they dropped to 0 or below, they were out, but I didn't like the idea of the players being forced to quit if I felt they could catch up, so I changed it to what it is right now. I included the idea that a player way behind could catch up with a bonus round, and one of the game variations that the DM could chose would be the versus mode, which could act as a negative feedback loop -- allowing someone way behind to catch up AND pull back someone who's far ahead. As it stands right now though, it requires the player that's behind to unlock flawlessly in a turn, which is likely to have been a problem for someone so far behind as it is, so that part of it would likely have to be nixed or altered in some manner.



It's not a boring read for me! But I'm always trying to learn more, so thanks for the extra suppliments!

That's the exact same book we read in my game design class!