Fight or Flight Paper Prototyping and Game Development

For the start of this assignment(Building Paper Prototype of a Game), I had a very different idea than my partner. I had came up with a Hunter v.s. Hunted type game idea, that involved a grid style play and was much different than how our game turned out. My partner had an idea for a Mario kart type game, so we started on a game that combined both ideas.
Fight or Flight Prototype

Original Board Prototype

How to Play
(Instructions Made Before First Play Session)

Number of Players: 2

Suggested Ages: 8+

Game Time: 5-20 minutes

Game Inventory:

First you need a token for each player(best if different), game board or paper for a game board, about 20 cards for the game, and a six-sided die to roll.

Game play:

1)Game starts with random decision of who is hunter and who is hunted.

Rock Paper Scissors (RPS), unless both players choose roles willingly.

2)Hunted will always start the game, the hunted gets to move however many spaces they roll +3 on the first roll as a head start.

3)After this each player will take turns rolling after the one another and only move the amount of spaces on the die.

4)Goal of each character is different, Hunter wants to catch hunted and Hunted wants to escape hunter.

Hunter Catches hunted
by landing on them directly, but if they pass the hunted they then become the hunted. The hunted becomes the hunter. (Second part created as first session started.

Hunted Escapes Hunter
by stepping past them, this means going around 27+ spaces.

Card spaces will give players chance to change the odds of game. Only 1 card may be kept at a time. If landing on card space while having card, draw and decide which card to keep.

Example of play: Players do RPS to figure out the initial roles. Hunted will go first with a head start of +3 to their roll.

First Session...Creation and Testing the Waters

We went with the round board, like a race track/circuit and then created spaces(27 exactly). I had the idea to use cards in my original game, so we decided to put that into our game and made card spaces throughout the board(I decided to use a sequence to place card spaces). After that we decided on what to put on the cards and started to play our first round.

After setting up the game and deciding roles we took off with my partner as Hunted and I as the Hunter. At first the Hunter just had to land on or pass the hunted to win, but this brought up some new ideas for me quickly being that Hunter would swap roles with Hunted when they pass them(Giving a new dynamic to the game, making it much more even). From here the game went on with us trying to define how cards are properly used and continuously swapping roles provoking an ongoing hunt. The first game ended in my victory, it was very insightful to what the game could be and what it needed to be more fun.

My First Taste of Victory

Changes/Overview after 1st session

Added to game:

Game map changed 21 spaces now, same card space distribution(Sequence +3,+5,+2)

• Gave a more even playing field for hunted and made the mechanics more enjoyable.

New types of spaces, Terrain may be applied to have areas with:
Cover(Tall Grass/Tree): where hunter cannot catch the hunted when landed on here.
Stall(Water/Mud): takes 2 steps to get out if landed on. ( -1 from dice roll)
Skip(Open Plains): Hunter can avoid taking this step or take it.(skip space if wanted)

• Helped to enhance variety and chance in game.

New Rules:

Hunted is caught Hunter by stepping on them, this means going around 21 spaces back to where hunter is but instead of passing them to safety, one lands directly on the hunter.

• Gave a negative dynamic for the Hunted player when they almost win, in this case the Hunter has a chance to have a positive effect happen when the hunted is close to escaping and gets an unfortunate roll.
• Before the Hunter only had this negative dynamic when close to catching the hunted, but passing the hunted with an overshot roll and swapping roles.

Changed play dead to include stalk for hunter, meaning if hunter is passed while stalk is played, they are still the hunter.

• Made game feel more equal sided, so hunter could not get a useless card.

Took out of game:

Pick any card

• Seemed unfair to either player.

Cards for first Fight or Flight prototype

Second Session, with Friend(Roommate)

This second playing session(first after revisions), was a blast to play with my roommate. To start, I thoroughly went over the rules and concepts of the games in far too much detail to my roommate(He understood the game quickly but i blabbered on about the mechanics and development). The rules were not difficult for him to understand, and soon we chose characters and were playing rock-paper-scissors to decide who would be hunter or hunted.

Second prototype of game board(21 spaces and terrain added)

I won the RPS match, and promptly chose hunter(I(Gorilla) was going to devour my own roommate(Lion)). He started the game with a good head start and was able to keep away from me for a while, but it didn’t take me more than 5 turns to catch up to him. Cards were being played left and right, causing sprinting and halts of characters. Sometimes the terrain became a turning point of the game, and in fact Open Plains terrain was where the game was won.

When things started to get close, he was able to escape me for a few extra turns due to terrain complications on my part and the clever card playing of my roommate. When I finally caught up with him again, the odds turned on me as I passed the lion and he then became the hunter, but then quickly we again swapped roles as he passed me...This was getting to be a tense game of cat and mouse, but our roles were being randomly swapped.

Again I found myself being chased by the lion, and I hopefully used my sprint card after rolling to get a +2 boost on my roll. This landed me in the Open Plains with the lion not too far behind(3-4 spaces), and I knew he had the choice of whether or not he wanted to use a step walking over the Open Plains terrain. He silenced for the roll, then slowly rolled the die...side by side it rolled till losing all momentum and landing on a 4. The rest was Darkness………..

Overview of 2nd Session:

My roommate liked the game, gave it a good review and said he liked the swapping dynamic of the game. I Enjoyed the second round even though I didn’t win. It was awesome to see someone else enjoy the work I made and put effort into, and I was really happy with the changes I made. I might add more terrain spots or something else, but in the meantime I want others to try this secondary prototype.

Board Game Lab Session

Smash Up Session Report

When first being coming to class I was unsure of what I was going to play, but right away Smash Up caught my eye!(Image Below) Everything on this cover was interesting to me, and I had to know more about it.

Cover to Smash Up

Links to Smash Up on BoardGameGeek:

Smash Up (Links to an external site.)                        Review (Links to an external site.) (Links to an external site.)

Smash Up mechanics:

Smash Up starts with each player choosing two different themed decks, and then they mix the two decks together to get a nice mixture of the two themes. There are a deck of base cards to be drawn from and placed on the table, the number of base cards in play should be 1 more than how many players there are(Ex. 4 players = 5 bases cards). Each turn, players get to put down a action card and minion card from their hand, and then draw 2 more cards from their deck. The objective is to capture bases by placing enough minions on them, to get points. First player to get the set amount of points wins the game.

My Smash Up Session Report:

The rules of this game are fairly complex to understand when you first jump in, even with a veteran player in our playing group to guide us it was a bit hard to grasp. Some of the rules/aspects of the game seemed unclear, and most of this confusion was from the action cards or player effects, where the wording would make it difficult to understand what was supposed to be done.

We started the game with 4 players, so that meant that we had 5 base cards in play. Starting bases included alien, zombie, ninja, and fairy bases, all having different effects that would either effect the game once the base was taken over or every time a card was played on it. My deck was the destructive and stealthy combo of Ninjas and Robots, ninjas have a tendency to be sneaky and robots come in the masses. The other players and their respective decks were Kurt with Zombie/Bears (Zombies come back from the dead and bears are just badass), Stacey with Fairy/Wizards (Fairies are well fairy-like and wizards get to use many actions), and Eddie the veteran with Alien/Pirates (Aliens are known to abduct others and pirates like to steal). Our game was to 10 points.

The game started with Eddie, who proceeded to play a minion who automatically gained him a point, then moved on to Stacey's turn who nervously played her first cards unknowing of what was going on or how to really play, just like Kurt and I stumbled through our first turns. After getting the idea of the game down a little more, it was very fast paced and players seemed on edge throughout the turns, unknowing of what will happen. Unfortunately for my group, our veteran player was helping the class and had to leave for about half the game, leaving some room for the noobs to flex their new skills. 

The bases started to slowly be taken over as the game went on, and luckily for me the robots and ninjas were prevailing on the map. Although the bear/zombies put up a good fight, the aliens were afcg(Away from Card Game) almost half the time and fairy/wizards could not get enough minion cards down to overtake a base. As base upon base was strategically sieged by my Ninja/Robot armies, the points stacked in my favor, till finally the last base "The central Brain" was won by me and the game was mine!

Last Base Card Won

Overall I really did like the game and feel it is best played with more than two people probably. (I haven't played it with less than 3) This game can take some time, our game was about 30-45 mins long, but if you set the winning amount of point to less than it could end faster.

If you liked my Session report, her is another Smash Up Session Report from BoardGameGeek.

Hope you enjoyed this Session report, and please go try out Smash Up for yourself!