Devlog Journal 12

In class this week, we were asked to play a certain board game so we could learn about the competitive nature of a board game. We were assigned to our respective groups. Our group was asked to play a game called Haunted Mansion, which was a board game quite similar to Sushi Go. The only difference was simply how much more there was in terms of the contents of the game. You had to move your pieces on the board to collect each ghost card that had point values similar to Sushi Go. However, you also have the option to duel someone for their ghosts as well. It gave us an example of what a competitive and interactive board game looks like. We were then asked to complete an assignment on Microsoft Teams that had the class brainstorm the board game we were going to choose to make for the board game project. The topic of the board game project was the unique cover art. In the assignment, we were asked to brainstorm a game by choosing a fake game with unique cover art on a certain website and thinking about how it could be implemented to be a board game. We were asked to name the verbs, win condition, narrative, etc. that we thought could be in the game we chose.

For our board game project, I wanted to learn about what makes a board game... well... a board game. So I watched a video where Soren Johnson discusses How Board Games Matter to get a picture of how we can make our board game, here were some of my takeaways (timestamps below):

2:35 - Soren states that board games are not exactly defined by their physicality, but they are defined by their transparency. Meaning that it is simple to perceive the rules and mechanics of the game and how certain scenarios occur within the game because of player action. (X happens because of Y.)

4:52 - Soren continues to explain how board games are defined by transparency. In the cube tower game called Shogun, Soren explains that the mechanics of the combat system are rather simple to understand and that the simplicity and transparency of the tower itself create more depth in its gameplay.

29.48 - Soren states that transparency is the key factor that enables dynamic play. He explains this with various examples, but the example Soren used to explain it that I could understand the most was the Civ video game series. Soren explains that in the earlier entries of Civ, there were various modifiers and outcomes in the game that were convoluted and hard to understand for a new player, there were even mechanics that would shock newer players simply because they did not know they existed. In the later entries of Civ, the modifiers that can determine certain outcomes were actually displayed to the player before he engages in the battle in the first place, giving the game much better transparency than it used to have in the earlier entries of Civ.