Individual Contribution: Deadlines: The Game

Collaborating with my group to create Deadline: The Game was a very interesting experience as I have never developed a proper game before, so this whole semester of learning about the game mechanics, understanding how games really work as well as playing them helped so much more than I anticipated.

During the first weeks of us becoming a group we play tested many games that would help us formulate the game. We really wanted to have the element of collaboration as the sole focus for it and we wanted to highlight the struggle of working in a group we may not life. We originally wanted there to be an ‘imposter’ someone who would sabotage the game, but we realised if that were the case the rule of elimination would have to exist, and we all know elimination is not really that fun when you are sitting out the whole time.

Delegate:

My biggest role in the group was managing everyone, what that meant was I would look at all the tasks we had to complete, and would assign them to the various members making sure that it would get done on time and efficiently.

The importance of delegating a project is never about telling people what to do. It is more focused on looking at the big picture and discussing how long we have to complete it as well as how much we have to do. This was really important so no one was overwhelmed with thinking about the entire project, rather we were able to focus on our individual tasks.

Design:

For the design process, I really wanted to make sure that Deadlines: The Game had a visually appealing look to it and if we were to create a physical version of the game then the physical design would complement the visual.

When considering the design for Deadlines: The Game, I really focused on the aesthetic more than anything. I believe that a game can be fun to play but it is even more fun when there is visually appealing element to the game, so you feel more enticed to play each time.

Some of my favourite table-top game designs included:

Unstable Unicorns: these games overall look & feel of all the cards as well as colours were incredible. It has been beautifully illustrated, and the branding of the game is not only consistent but really highlights the essence of the game perfectly.

Takenoko: I have not played this game, but I remember observing the box and explaining to the group before we found 5-minute dungeons, the sizing of what the boards would be like. The beautiful smooth box is something that would be implemented into the final design of the game if it were to be printed.

5 Minute Dungeons: The boss cards were an element that inspired our ‘assessment’ based projects during the final minutes / seconds of the round.

King of Tokyo: Dayle suggested this game as good alternative for some of the design pieces implementing the dial mechanism from this game into ours. When we play tested, we found that the original boards for the game was a bit confusing so implementing the design of the dial helped to make the game less complicated.

Prototyping Designs:

With the assistance of Alicia, both of us together sat down and drew up some basic designs on paper.

We then took the designs and created a digital copy. Our original idea to keep track of the student progress was a board with squares to keep track of it. However, we never saw the purpose for it as we realised that there were too many physical pieces / elements to the game that would create too much confusion. We wanted our game to feel minimal without it being overwhelming for the users.

After the initial change we implemented tokens to see if this would be a better fit.

Again, after playtesting and looking at the pros / cons for the mechanics we realised it was too difficult to use. Sometimes with games it is better to strip everything back an create a game that is simple rather than too complex.

Dayle offered the dice rolling game, King of Tokyo, it was a perfect fit for the game. We implemented the dials as a great way to simplify the tracking of the stress-o-meter as well as the student progress.

It ended up being a lot more minimal instead of the chunk and fiddly game pieces.

The final design Alicia & I did were the project cards also considered the ‘boss challenge’ during the final minutes of the rounds in the game.

After the design of the game, I went away and created a physical mock-up of a prototype table-top design box. What I envisioned the box to look like as an example if it were physically printed.

Presentation Design & video editing:

The final stage to the game design project was designing the presentation for the class. The slides, all the formatting were done by me with the assistance of Elliot to speed up the process.

After all the individual content was in every slide, I went in and made sure that the font was consistent as well as all the colours and the overall aesthetic of the presentation.

To finish, I downloaded the presentation from Canva with the slide transition and implemented this into my video editor where I imported all the voice recordings to match it with the slideshow.

If you look at the script, you will notice that I asked Alicia to implement when the slide would change so I was able to cut line up the slide with the voice. After cutting the ums and awkward pauses, I designed a quick YouTube video cover & uploaded it onto YouTube.