Devlog 12

This week (November 14 and 16), we began working on the board game project for the class. My team chose to make a game based on a cartridge with the title "Misery Angels"; we plan to have the game feature a black and white film noir aesthetic with red accents, similar to the cartridge art. The gameplay, meanwhile, will involve players moving within and between three districts to collect evidence, complete missions, and cross the border to win. In his talk "Designing Great UX into Your Game Board and Pieces", Jason Schklar mentions near the beginning of the talk that it is ideal for players to learn as they play a game rather than learning and then playing (3:38). He also brings up a "board game exercise" that he's used in the past; he gives players a board game that they've never played before and tasks them to figure out how to play it without any help from him or the game's manual, and after about 20-30 minutes, the players discuss how the game's board and pieces helped or hurt this process and brainstorm fixes (4:18-5:20). The idea at the heart of this process is that a game's board and pieces should give players an intuitive sense of how to play the game even without reading the manual, which is a point that we will need to take into consideration when designing our board game. Near the end of the talk, Schklar states that UX considerations should supplement normal playtesting and game makers should consider the tradeoffs between art and usability (19:11). This is another point that will be particularly important to keep in mind as we work on this project; UX should become a concern only after early iteration of the game's design is finished and balance feedback is received and acted upon.