Devlog 6

Since I wasn't able to attend class I will talk about ideas to add to the traveling game for my group and which one I liked out of the three ideas. The one game idea that caught my eye was making a Volcano-based traveling game where you try to move from one volcano island to another without dying, I was thinking of how might we make traveling from island to island more terrifying and scarce. "As you can see, with the “how might we...” method we have a general concept or design problem already, and we’re using the brainstorm to consider the ways we can represent or solve it in a game. We’re thinking through the details of an idea to various ways the game might look, feel, and play." - Macklin and Sharp -Chapter 9: Conceptualizing Your Game. My idea to make the game more tense was if each island to have a set amount of boats for each player to go to the next island. So the first island would have 4 boats, then the second island would have 3 boats, the third island would have 2 boats, and finally the fourth island would be the final boat. Not only would limited boats scare the player to get to the end of each island but you would have to roll the correct number to get on the boat too. " Playable prototypes are functional, playable prototypes that allow players to experience the main actions in the game. These tend to be rough, often not including graphics, sound, or even goals. The point of playable prototypes is to investigate the core actions players perform in the game." - Macklin and Sharp - Chapter 10: Prototyping Your Game. There is a variant of the base game that could be an interesting gamemode where instead of trying to be the last person to get on the final boat on the final island you have to try and sabotage other players, getting more frequent weapons and traps for others to use on the islands. Instead of having a limited amount of boats the islands all have four boats and they automatically move you to the next island. "Section 10: Variants: If you want to present other ways to play the game, you should save those options for their own section. In general, you should not describe alternate rules in the Sequence of Play, because you need to give a clear basic game flow for new players. Listing variant options in the main game section just creates confusion about which is the canonical version of the game." - James Ernest - Writing Effective Rules.