Devlog Journal 9

In class this week. We talked about game balance and asymmetry. We then played a game called Battle Battle to see how game balance and asymmetry worked within the game. Battle Battle is a game where we each choose a character card and do one versus one battles with other players and their character cards. For each round, each player rolls a die simultaneously, and the winner of the roll is determined by the higher value that was rolled. When a player wins a round, they deal one hit point of damage to their opponent. The game ends when one player's hit points reach zero. You can even use tokens, powers, and dice roll effects to alter how the base game plays as well as to make things more interesting.

After playing Battle Battle, we were asked to create a game using the base mechanics of Battle Battle to help create a game that was a three versus one raid battle. We were all assigned to be in a group to do this and were asked to pitch in our ideas for what our game's theme would be. We have to keep the focus of our game on how it is balanced, here are some things I have learned from chapter 13 in Jesse Schell's The Art of Game Design to make our focus on how balanced our game is possible:

When our lecture explained what game balance was, I first thought of fairness and how there was no excitement in a one-sided game. Jesse Schell states "One of the simplest ways to ensure this is to make your game symmetrical, that is, to give equal resources and powers to all players." For a game like Battle Battle, it is possible to give both players the same character card to give both players a completely symmetrical and even match. However, as we did learn what a symmetrical game could look like in Battle Battle, it doesn't seem possible to create a completely symmetrical game for a three versus one game. So we will have to balance our game by making our game asymmetrical.

I am very much aware of what the consequences of creating an asymmetrical game are. Jesse Schell states "It is also possible, and often desirable, to give opponents different resources and abilities. If you do, be aware that you have a significant balancing task ahead of you!" We wanted to create our game to have more interesting situations rather than just giving the players the same options and abilities as their opponents do. But we did this considering the kind of task it would be. Jesse Schell also states "In the infinite space of all the games that can be created, many more of them are asymmetrical than are symmetrical." I grew up playing and liking mainly asymmetrical games like Super Smash Brothers, Yu-Gi-Oh, or any other games that give players different roles to achieve the same goal over symmetrical games. Our group chose to do an asymmetrical game and I think this Battle Battle project with be a good opportunity to learn about how asymmetrical games are designed and how to design them well.