Dead End: Analog Game Reflection
Dead End is a tabletop card game with a post-apocalyptic survival theme in which players are randomly distributed a pool of resources and left to compete for survival. A turn-based system was implemented where players can attack, steal, trade, or use resources during respective turns in response to random personal and global events. These events can help the player by granting resources or damage reduction, or harm the player by taking resources, dealing damage, or applying damage increases.
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Development Synopsis
Dead End was the first tabletop game I'd ever attempted to be a part of. Previously, I had glamorized the idea of making a video game, and everything about game development was centered around a computer taking care of most of the mechanics, while I could focus on other aspects, such as the story or the gameplay. However, Dead End shattered the idea that game making would be easy. The idea of the game ended up changing several times, ending up at a survival-based adventure game. The mechanics include turn-based card strategy, where players have to make decisions with several factors in mind. The objective is to stay alive for as long as possible while having the best time you can with the group. The intended outcome was to have a game that was quick and easy to learn, involved everyone, and could be played by anybody. While the task was daunting, we did it.
Early Development
Before we came to Dead End, the initial project was a zombie survival game called "Don't Get Bit", in which there was an individual in a group of survivors who was carrying a zombie virus. The goal of the game was to kill the zombie if you were not it, or to kill everyone else if you were the zombie.
The game was rough, unclear, and definitely was not the easiest to understand. All of the group had the basic idea of what the game was to be, but no one had figured out exactly how it was to work or how it was working at the time. It was overloaded with concepts and content with no refinement, and all of the implementations of ideas conflicted with each other. For a couple of weeks, the game was highly conceptual with no real application of the ideas. The group struggled to connect the several dots we had laid out for ourselves. |
Restart
Due to the game being confusing, having no clear goals, and almost no implementation of the ideas we wanted to commit to, the group decided to channel our attention into a different game. We took a list of the concepts and ideas we felt were the most interesting in Don't Get Bit, narrowed that list down to a condensed set of ideas, and carried those ideas into a new game. This list contained few concepts: Win by Survival, Resources, Events, and keeping the game humorous.
In the midst of attempting to clarify how exactly to use resources and how to survive, the idea of Health Tokens was brought up. After weeks of struggling to find a way to link everything, we had found what our previous game was lacking. Once we set on the Health Token concept, the remainder of the first prototype was finished within 5 minutes. It was the key to the game, and the rest just flowed out once we found it. |
Playtesting
Playtesting was an experience that really showed me how rewarding it is to make a game that other people enjoy. It also revealed a process that most people do not pay attention to: how players learn games.
We got to watch players learn how to play our games, how they interact with the rules, and how they make their own up to suit the game. It was an awesome and insightful experience watching other players and game makers look at your game as both a player and a developer to see what was fun from the outside and what needed work on the inside. Through playtesting we refined our game based on the feedback. We ended up streamlining the rules to make them more clear and coming up with the Scavenge action to replace Trade, making trades available at any time. Another nibble of information was that players still wanted to be involved, even postmortem. This led to our team discussing the possibility of allowing players to come back as a Zombie, although it has not been implemented. |
End Game
In all, the analog tabletop game was a success. It was a massive learning experience, and gave a new look on how I view games and the process it takes to create them.
Group projects are usually a dull experience, where the members meet maybe once a week for twenty minutes because they have to. However, with this game the team all shared the same goals, the same passion, and worked extremely well together. It was a fun, challenging, and rewarding experience. Our group should be, and is, proud of the game we created. It's engaging, fun, easy to learn, and we made it. We were given the chance to create a tool for people to use to enjoy, and we succeeded. |