Devlog 8

Over the course of this week (October 10 and 12), we continued to playtest the games we created as a group; on Thursday in particular, we also tried to finalize the rules, cards, and other aspects of the games' presentation. In Chapter 8 of The Art of Game Design, Jesse Schell lists ten tips for productive prototyping and offers rules of thumb for getting games done on time and under budget. The second and third tips are particularly relevant to this project, as they advise developers to develop a prototype only to answer a question without wasting any effort on polishing it and to avoid getting attached to it, since the iterative design process involves repeatedly improving and testing the design with new prototypes. On Tuesday, my group only had a crude prototype to work with, as we cut index cards in half and used the backs of them to make the prototype cards; this prototype deck still functioned well for playtesting, and we were able to determine what we wanted to change about the game. The sixth prototyping tip is also useful, as it states that prototypes do not necessarily have to be digital; a paper prototype can be used even for something like a video game to demonstrate the same gameplay while developing the prototype faster.

(Side note: I was not able to cite Chapter 4 of Unboxed due to the only copy available being in use at the time I was writing this post.)