Game Commercial

One of the requirements for our board game were to make a commercial to advertise it. I figured cheesy 90's would be just what I wanted. Enjoy this majestic commercial.

Physical Board Game

It's finally done! Here are some pics of my physical board game. It's been a long time coming and I'm very happy with the results. Everything was supposed to reinforce the theme of my game, which was ghost investigating. I tried to make everything based off stuff you would use when you investigate (aka the blueprint board, the yellow sticky notes, the manila folder rule book). The cards I got printed off printerstuidos.com and they were definitely worth it. Very good quality for a good price. The player pieces are made of colored acrylic and are in the shape of ghosts! Also the dice glow in the dark. Just a lil added bonus. This was a great project! 

Print and Play

It's officially done. The print and play version of my game is now available for download. Go have fun with it!

Download here:

Ghost Investigators

Playtest Results

After getting everything in my game in a semi-working order, it was time for playtesting. Of course, within five minutes, it was already broken. Between bad grammar, confusing rules, and some weird mechanics that I have a lot to do. Here is a list of things that I need to fix and some suggestions/ideas on how:

• Going into rooms that don't affect a player need to be more interesting. I need to add something to them such as affect cards. I have figured that there should be about twenty cards (subject to change) and that they all shouldn't be bad. I plan on making ten semi-okay cards, five good cards, and five bad cards. 
• I got several suggestions that people wanted to be able to screw people over in the game. This lead to the idea of a malicious ghost idea. Basically, this ghost is controlled by everyone playing the game. For every turn that you make, the person to your right takes the same turn. If the malicious ghost lands on or goes past your character, you will either lose a turn or start back at the entrance. 
• The original character cards had the full description of the characters story. The beginning, middle, and end. I was suggested that this wasn't random enough and could make the game boring. So what I came up with is a way to make the stories and the rooms different each game. First I decided to make an easy, medium, and hard card. You have the basic character card that tells you which ghost you are looking for and the clue to their first room/easy card. Each time you find the right room, you then pull the next level of card until you figure out the hard card. This makes the game much more interesting. This also lead me to a problem that people could get the same room twice in a row. To make sure this doesn't happen, I made each difficulty card have different rooms from the one before them. 
• Rule wise, I need to make sure I discuss the player movement piece, how to pick the player movement piece, and where to place them at the beginning of the game. 
• I need to make it clear that the player to left has your ghost card. 
•  Last but not least, all the grammar. 

I learned a lot from playtesting and hopefully will be able to do more of it to make my game even better. 

Prototype Rulebook

Ghost Hunters

So good that even the ghouls like it

A game by Allie Thomas

20, 2-4

Collect more evidence than your opponents

Blackburn Home for the Criminally Insane use to be the forerunner in treating its patients. That is until someone found out about the way they treated their wards. Now one hundred years later, Blackburn stands abandoned. Yet some say you can still see and hear some of the patients that weren’t lucky enough to make it out with their lives.

Race around the board trying to collect all your ghost cards before your opponents.

Players swap turns moving around the board and investigating rooms. If a room is entered, the player then gets to investigate that room. After the investigation is over, whether successful or not, the players turn is over.

Game Components

The board.

Affect cards. Sixteen ghost cards.

Player pieces. Die. Ghost coin.  

Board has four separate pieces. Print each one out on a separate piece of 8.5 x 11 paper. Tape board together based on color-coded lines. Print out all cards and character pieces. Cut cards out. You will need a die and a coin.

Setting up the game

Shuffle the affect and evidence card separately. Place the affect cards on the affect card square face down. Place one evidence card in each room face down. Each play picks their player piece and puts it on the start square. Each player takes their player card.

Roll the die to see who goes first. The player with the highest number wins.

Turn Order

Roll die           

Move player piece

If possible, investigate. If not, end turn.

If investigating, flip ghost coin. Heads up means look at card. Tails means don’t look at card.

End of turn

First Phase

Roll the die to see if how many spaces you move.

Second Phase

Whatever number on the die you rolled, move that many spaces.

Player can move forward or backward, no diagonals.

Roll a four on a six-sided die, move four spaces toward the room of your choice.

Third Phase

If possible, enter a room and start investigation. Pick what item you are going to investigate with and then flip the ghost coin.

When you enter a room, this is where you will investigate to see if there is a ghost in the room.

You roll a four, you move your piece two spaces and into a room. You decide that you want to investigate with your camera, so you tell the other players that. Next flip the coin to see if the investigation is a success or not.

Check for Victory

If you get heads up, your investigation is successful and you can look at the ghost card in the room. If it applies to you, you can take the card. If it does not apply to you, put the card back face down. To trick the other players, you can put the card back down even if it applies to you.

How the card applies to you is based on what item you investigated with. On your character card, when you picked camera (or whatever item you chose) there is a number next to the item. If the camera has a five next to it and the ghost card has a camera and a five next to it, which means it does apply to you. If the number and item don’t match, the card doesn’t apply to you.

End of turn

Turn ends.

Play passes to the left.

Glossary

Player piece – Coin with your characters face on it.

Character card – Card that matches the player’s character piece.

Ghost Coin – Coin with a ghost on one side. You flip it when figuring out if your investigation is a success.

Evidence card – cards with ghost on them.

Affect card – affects gameplay in someway.  

EMF – Electronic magnetic field detector.

Strategy tips and design notes

If you successfully investigate a room, you don’t have to take the card after you look at it. You can mark down that that specific card is in that room and then put back down. This will lead other players to believe that that room doesn’t have your card, which means it could have theirs. The other players will waste their time trying to investigate that room now. Of course that puts you at risk a bit because another player could find all his evidence before you.

Theme and Concept

  Out of the twenty ideas that I came up with while brainstorming, the one that I thought would deliver a memorable and entertaining experience was ghost hunting. So, the theme of my game will be just that, ghost hunting. What I'm trying to convey with this theme is the experience of what its like to go ghost hunting, going into a believed haunted location and exploring. Ghost hunting is where you collect evidence, usually on an electronic device, to try and prove that there is paranormal things happening in that location. 

  Researching ghost hunting, the obvious thing that would come up is Ghost Hunters. I watched a couple episodes to figure out what goes into ghost hunt. Everything in the show helped sell the ghost hunting theme. The color scheme makes everything seem very creepy and mysterious. There is a lot of dark colors, black and white contrasting, and greens. There are occasional bright colors when they use the thermal imagers, but overall it's a dark show. The music in the show is also very creepy, which adds to the creepy ghost hunting theme. The cameras they use are usually very close to the investigators faces, to make it seem like you're there. Like anyone can do it. When they cut to commercials they have creepy little scenes which convey the feelings of a ghost hunt. They creepy factor. They also do a lot of different camera angles. Also, the investigators are always talking about ghost hunting, so you're constantly thinking about it. 

  I'm going to incorporate as much as I can from a real ghost investigation, which includes the color schemes. So I would like to incorporate a lot of the colors used above. Ghost hunting is done in the dark, so it makes sense that the color scheme would be dark. I plan on having brighter accent colors, like the green and blue used above. I will probably try and incorporate the yellow and red also. 

Brainstorming Board Game Ideas

Trying to come up with a singular idea for a board game is overall pretty easy. That is until you have try and make it playable. Give them game rules, make obstacles, figure out the mechanics and that becomes a whole new ball game. I'm going to start off with the easy stuff, just small combos of words to generate the creative juices.

• Werewolf game. Kinda like clue. Who is the werewolf? 
• Werewolf game. Race between werewolf and hunter towards some kind of goal
• Monster game. Kid is tired of being afraid of monsters in his room so him and his sleepover buds go monster hunting
• Motherboard game
• Mob war game. Guess who mixed with Stratego 
• Game of Thrones type of game. Different families fighting over the throne of the kingdom
• Release the Kraken game
• Element game
• Ghost hunter game. Try and capture evidence of ghosts. Person with the most evidence at the end wins
• Haunted house walkthrough game
• Booby trap game where each player sets up booby traps for the other players to get through
• Kidnap game. Race other players to kidnap the CEO and get away with it. Lots of sabotage
• Flying boat game. Customize your flying boat then race it around the board. Can equip boats with guns or speed boosts. First around the board 5 times wins
• 4th floor krakens game. Collect the 8 items to become the master of the kraken!
• Pug Life. Be the baddest pug in the neighborhood
• Zombie game. Play as a horde of zombies trying to eat the last survivors
• Armadillo roll. Roll your armadillos into boxes to collect items
• Rat extermination game. Each player is a pest control worker. Exterminate the more rats in 20 mins than the others to win
• Zombie game. The first person to get through the town without getting bitten wins. If you get bitten you get to go after the other players
• Christmas light game. You are an elf trying to light Santa's christmas lights. To do so you must rush through the maze picking up as many lights as you can
• FInd Santa's reindeer. All of Santa's reindeer got out and now it's your job to find them. Whoever finds the most reindeer by the end wins

So there are 20 ideas. Good, bad, and ugly ones. At the moment my personal favorites are the mob game, the kraken ones, the ghost hunting ones, and the second zombie one. Each one has its merits and some major problems at the moment but now that I have it narrowed down a bit, I can start figuring out how they're going to work.

Deconstruction of a PNP

  After playing several PNP games, it's time to go in and analyze one of them.The game that I have decided to  analyze is Bad Grandmas. How I'm going to do this is based off of Jesse Schell's book The Art of Game Design: a Book of Lenses. In chapter 10 of the book, Schell goes into detail about mechanics of games, with nine different parts.

  The first question that must be answered is what is the goal of the game. Bad Grandmas thankfully comes with extremely clear and concise instructions. It says that the aim of the game is, "Score points by pitting your Grandmas against each other. The player with the most points after seven rounds wins!" This is a simple enough goal that makes it very clear what the players are aiming for.

  The second question that needs to be answered is what is the core mechanic of the game. In Bad Grandmas, the core mechanic of the game is putting the cards down for the Grandmas to fight. This is a really simple game overall, but I think the special cards and modifiers really make it special.

  The next question is the space of the game. Bad Grandmas is a card game so the space is continuous. There isn't a board to play on so I just used a table top. You have to shuffle the cards and then set two aside. This is the modifier. That part of the space is only used to set up a modifier to the game rules, so after the two cards are set aside and the top one is flipped over, you don't touch it again. The next space that is used is the area between the two players. After you deal the cards, this is where each person plays one of their Grandmas. This would be considered the fight area. After the winning Grandma is chosen, the cards get set aside in a discard pile so the area is cleared for another Grandma smack down. The table top is the space where the die is rolled. This happens with some of the Grandmas modifiers or there attack power. You need a way to keep score in the game, so you'll need a pencil and paper. This is another one of the spaces of the game. When I played, I just set this aside until I needed to write down the score. The last space to consider is the players hand. This is where you keep your Grandmas until you're ready to unleash them. The game is 2D.

  The next thing to consider is the objects, attributes, and states of the game. There are four objects in the game. The objects are the 16 Grandma cards (I'm counting them as one object, the cards), a six-sided die, a piece of paper, and a pencil. The attributes for the cards are: current attack level, possible modified attack level, special rule, attack weapon, and modified rule on attack weapon. The attributes on the die would be the six sides. The state of the attributes for the cards are: 0-7 attack level with one attack level decided by a die roll, 1-13 attack level with a modifier, special rule dictates that only one point can be scored in a fight against Myrtle, sewing needle or rolling pin, and only certain weapons score against each other or a certain weapon gets a point added to their attack.

  Another thing you have to look at is the operative actions that a player can make. Operative actions are the base actions that a player can take. The operative actions a player can make in Bad Grandmas is playing a Grandma card and rolling the die to determine attack power (only with Dame Nellie Cadaver). With every operative actions, there are resultant actions that sprout up. You can send out your lower power Grandmas first thus saving the best for last, play your higher power Grandmas first so you can get more points fast, and take the modifier into account and switch your strategy from high powered Grandmas first to last.
  The next thing to define is the rules of the game. The first rules that we must discuss are the operational rules. These are what the player does to play the game. For Bad Grandmas, that is, "In each round both players select one of their Grandmas and place it face-down. Reveal the cards simultaneously. The winner of the round is the player with the strongest Grandma (unless this has been modified). The difference between the two strengths (once any modifier has been applied) gives the points scored by the winner (unless the points have been modified). 1, 2, 3 = 1 point, 4 or 5 = 2 points, 6 or more = 3 points. " One of the things that I noticed when I played was that the point values that the rules provided at the end, I completely ignored. Instead of using the point system that way, I calculated the difference between the the Grandmas attack power. When reading the rules, I didn't make immediate sense of the point system. Without even thinking about the best way to do it, I switched to the way stated above. I asked the other player what he thought about my way of scoring, and he said he thought it was supposed to be like that. This leads me to believe that it is a innate way of playing the game.
  When it comes to skill, Bad Grandmas only uses mental and social skills, no physical ones. The mental skills that can be utilized in this game are memory and observation. Memory is used by remembering the attack power of each Grandma. There are only sixteen total so that's not too difficult. The thing I did find a bit more difficult to memorize was the Grandmas weapon. As stated above, each Grandma either has a rolling pin or sewing needles. Some of the modifiers that the game has effects those weapons. When trying to be strategic, knowing what weapons and attack power your opponents Grandmas have was helpful. Observation in this game is based off your memory skills. By knowing all the Grandmas in the deck, you can observe what Grandmas are in you hand. Besides the two cards set aside, this give you a very good idea of what your opponent has in their hand. This makes the rest of the game a game of observation and reading your opponent. That leads into the social skills of the game. There are no teammates to coordinate with so it's just about reading and fooling your opponent. To fool an opponent in this game is difficult if they have memorized the Grandmas. If they have, the only way is to fool them is the act of playing a card. You could pretend it's just a throw away card or act like it's the best card. Then it becomes about reading people. Being able to read your opponent is very important. If you can't, you might waste your most powerful Grandma on their weakest one.
  Like any good game, this game has chance. Chance can be found in almost every aspect of the game. The cards that are set aside are chosen by chance as well with the cards in your hand because you shuffle the entire deck. Chance is what Grandma card is used as the modifier. For the Grandma who uses a die roll to determine their attack, that entire card is a chance card. 

PNP Games

Out of the hundreds and hundreds of the PNP games out there, I found 3 that I decided to try. The first game I found was Cards Against Humanity. I had never played the game before but I had heard of it, which is why I was confused as to why it was for free on the PNP website. I did some research and found out that originally it was a PNP that became so successful that it turned into a legitimate game that you can buy. So this one I technically didn't print out, but I did play it. We have about 3 copies of the game in my house which we used instead. This game is overall not extremely complicated. You just play the white card out of your hand that you think goes best with black cards saying. I really like the simple design of the cards. I found it amusing that they are black and white, like most of the humor in the game. Looking at the printable version of the game, overall I don't think it would be that difficult to print and cut them out. It might take a while to cut them all out but not too hard.

The next game I played was called Stratrovarespelet. This game was a bit more complex than Cards Against Humanity. In this game you play as one of four highway men trying to get seven gold pieces. Being highway men, you can rob, steal, and cheat your way to all seven of the pieces. You have defense cards, movement cards, steal gold cards, and actual gold cards. The strategy comes in when another player tries to steal one of your gold pieces. This is when you can use your defense cards to save your gold. Then steal all their gold next turn of course. I picked this game based on it's design. Aka how fantastically ridiculous it looked. It's not the most aesthetically pleasing game, but I think that fact made it a bit better. The grammar and spelling of the rules was atrocious and not easily understandable. Because it wasn't a largely complex game, it was still playable (with some interpretations of the rules). This was another easy one to print and play. It had some larger pieces and a  lot more cards to print and cut which was a bit annoying to a point. I liked how you could steal from other people and also defend. That was a cool mechanic of the game. Because the rules were a bit unclear however, the game was lacking. 

The last game I played is called Bad Grandmas. The name alone makes this game great, add the artwork into it and I'm in love. This game did have some complexities to it. You basically pitted the Grandma's in a one-on-one battle to the death. Each one had an attack level with the winning one having a larger number. Some cards had specials like "lowest number wins" while others made you roll a die to figure out the attack strength. You had to think about when to play your highest cards compared to your opponent which made it fun. It was extremely easy to print and cut out, probably the easiest of the bunch. I really liked how the game could change each time based on the effect card, which would sometimes make you roll a die to add extra attack or would only award points if the Grandmas had a certain item. The only problem I had with it was the game went too fast. There weren't enough cards to really get into it. 

  Overall, Cards Against Humanity was the most enjoyable followed by Bad Grandmas and Stratrovarespelet last. There are definitely some quality issues that go on with PNP games. Mostly with confusing rules or mechanics. 

Here's the link to the games:

http://cardsagainsthumanity.com

http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/95589/bad-grandmas

http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/35382/stratrovarespelet

Assassin's Creed DIY Trailer

So far Game Design class has been fantastic! Two Assassin's Creed projects in a row have been perfect. Our first one we had to analyze the AC Revelations trailer and besides doing all the thumbnails, it was really fun! The second one we did is the video above. We had to make a trailer of our own from footage we had. Some people went for story, I went with more of an intro to Ezio and how epic he is. One person said it was like an intro they'd use in a MMA fight, showing the highlights of the person. This project was really fun to work on and taught me a lot about timing and rhythm. I think that the music that is picked out for a trailer really effects the kind of mood it gives off. It makes the trailer run smoother. Having beats on actions really helps drive home what's happening. If you don't have good music and rhythm, I don't think you'll have a good trailer.

Steve Hickner

Steve Hickner from Dreamworks came last week to Ringling and gave an early morning presentation on story boarding. He directed Bee Movie and worked on The Road to El Dorado! This guy is amazing!!!! He gave us a lot of useful tips and tricks while he was visiting. Here are some of the points he made:

• 3 frames for action shots
• Don't cut characters off at the joints
• Keep action in the golden egg (basically an oval on the screen where you want to keep the action)
• Don't be afraid to move the camera. Movement is important. Don't let a character not move either
• Eye trace is very important
• Separate your planes tonally 
• Perspective matters
• Don't underboard! The more it is planned out, the closer it will be to your timing

Hopefully he'll keep up this streak of presentations so we can learn even more next year! Let's see if we can incorporate this into our work! 

Festering Baseball Tiger

Had to draw a character based off three words in game design club. I got festering baseball tiger. So naturally I went with Tony the Tiger zombiefied.

Best Freshman Work

The Thorne Room assignment helped a lot with realizing spaces and making them believable. So much goes into them and the tiniest detail could make or break it. 

The Grunt assignment taught me a lot about how characteristics shape a characters design. Everything from color scheme to stitching are important. 

The Cicero bust drawing from figure 2 was the most helpful project when it came to lighting. I think having a stationary model over three classes gave me time to truly analyze how light worked. 

The three point perspective project was one of my favorites from first semester. I love how dynamic it is and you get a cool view of the space you're drawing. 

Amazing Game Trailer

I don't think I've ever seen a trailer that had me this excited for a game. Ubisoft did a fantastic job of putting out a trailer that got me excited to play a game without showing actual gameplay. You can see the best part of the game (tree running) while also getting a sense of the scope of the game, evident from the huge battlefield. Not to mention the slow motion of some of the shots that make the main character seem like an indestructible force. The trailer is like a mini movie; you've got the beginning, middle, and climatic end that leave you satisfied. At the same time, the ending just makes you want to play it even more so you can do all these amazing things. This is definitely my favorite trailer for a game.