Unit 2 - "Trial of the Marsh" Postmortem

As discussed in the last post, my Unit 2 partner and I made a board game titled Trial of the Marsh for our unit project. Since last time, we have continued to refine and polish the game, chiseling away its imperfections to carve out a semblance of a masterpiece. Even now, it's not perfect, honestly not even close, but we've worked hard to get it to where it is now, and I am proud of the final product. As always, here's the updated rule sheet, which will be the final one for the project:

My group was Number 8. As previously mentioned, we were given the genre of "Adventure game" and the theme of "Marshmallows." With this, we created the prototype for Trial of the Marsh. To summarize the game, 1 to 4 players will make their own dungeon. Using Character Cards with unique abilities and attributes, the players will traverse the dungeon they have created to obtain loot, fight enemies, and escape with their lives. The two biggest inspirations for our concept were Dungeons and Dragons and Enter the Gungeon. These two games are favorites for each group member. We used the core ideas of building your own story (D&D) and randomized dungeon crawling (Enter the Gungeon) as a foundation for our project.

Our target audience was 15-25, so we had quite a bit of freedom to play around with the rules and complexity of the gameplay. In Bartle's terms, our target audience would consist of all four main types of players. Killers would find it appealing because they would have the option to battle as many enemies as they wanted and also have fun eliminating the Bosses. Socializers would like the multiplayer aspect, as they could play it with friends or family and socialize while having fun. Explorers would enjoy the map aspect, as they could explore every corner of their dungeons as they wish and find all the treasure and various areas of intrigue. Finally, Collectors would find the game fun because they would have dozens of items to try and collect on their way through the map and have enemies to defeat. The player interaction pattern of the game is a reasonably standard co-op player versus the game system. The players work together as one party to go against the game and its challenges. This interaction pattern is most appealing to the Socializer player type but is enjoyable for basically any kind of player.

"Final" Game Materials:

There weren't many huge setbacks during the iteration process. The hardest part is establishing the game's foundation, essential elements, and parameters. Once we got past that point, it was just about refining everything as best as possible. The only real issue I encountered was that, although my partner did good work, they weren't in class often enough for me to be able to communicate my ideas properly. I ended up feeling like I had designed the whole game by myself, and to be honest, I did do the majority of the work. I don't want to say negative things about my partner because I like them and think they have good intentions; circumstances just took hold of the situation. Although I feel I deserve to take credit for most of the design, not all, but more than half. The playtesting and everything else went pretty smoothly, and I believe it turned out well.

Overall, the process was overwhelming but simultaneously rewarding in different ways. If I could change anything about the process, I would want more assistance from my partner so that I do not feel overwhelmed with work and the pressure of responsibility weighing on me as much. However, the iteration process went pretty smoothly, with no game-breaking issues or fundamental problems. I learned a lot, and I'm eager to keep doing so.