Meeting 9 – in Teams (16/11/20)
With David’s lecture on writing rules for board games fresh in our heads, we began to revise the flow of our ruleset. David’s suggested order played out like this:
- Title
- # of players / length of game
- Introduction
- Setup & components
- Goal
- Turns/Rounds/Actions
- Ending rounds / continuing play
- Ending play / declaring a winner
- Credits
Seeing the information parcelled out this way helped us think about the way players experience the game, and what they need to know when. Especially useful was the suggestion of compartmentalising the rules for a round, and dividing turns into specific (walked through) actions. So all the information about the game’s actions suddenly became divided between ‘inside your turn’ and ‘outside your turn’.
Together we jammed on the ruleset for an hour, fitting the rules into the above rubric. Along the way, we realised that the ‘valuation round’ not only provided the chief pain point in playing (it was where players had repeatedly stuttered, or had to re-consult the rules), but also the chief obstacle in smoothly reading (it took half a page of explaining to achieve maybe three seconds of play). On reflection, we realised that the same tactics of raising bids could be achieved by simply locking the starting bid at the number of the round – if a player wanted to put an antique out of reach of their opponent, they would have to take some risk in actually bidding for it.
We also received some more positive player feedback on the game from Luke, who had played it independently with his friends on Zoom!
Playtest with David and Valery – in Teams (18/11/20)
This time Shiquan observed and took notes, while Jacky and I played with David and Valery. We asked Valery to deliver the rules. Although she relied on her memory of the first time she played when she initially explained them, I steered her back to reading the new ruleset. Things were made much clearer.
Play was quick and fun – I didn’t miss the valuation round overmuch, which was my major concern going in.
Shiquan’s notes:
- The average playtime for a 4-player round is about 10 minutes, and it takes 5 minutes for new players to learn the rules from the new ruleset.
- The average time players spent presenting antiques was 55 seconds – if we were to add some guidance on a presenting time limit, keeping it under a minute would seem logical.
- A few rules caused moments of confusion / rule consultation:
- Most money vs victory points.
- Players not taking coins for selling items.
- Players being able to bid on their own items.
- Feedback:
- Game was really enjoyable – “I had fun playing it” (David); “much more fun than the last version” (Valery).
- Setting up how the player tracks points, antiques and coins should be made much clearer – almost hand-holdy. David and Val suggested making a sample chart or column for players to reduce the stress from inventing a new tracking and calculating system.
- Lines that are used to describe conditions of gaining and losing victory points/coins should be more precise. David suggested utilizing more math symbols e.g. replacing “gain 1 point” with “+1 point”.
Meeting 10 – UAL Campus (20/11/20)
On Friday I brought in the designed ruleset on USB and imported it into InDesign.
Over the week I had iterated on the ruleset’s design in Viva Designer – not the most user-friendly of programs, but I made it work! Moving the orientation to landscape gave me a bit more room to play with, and Jacky sent over some illustrations, which I incorporated into the design.
Shaded boxes helped break up the text, and highlight the most important information: the basic introduction, and what a player needs to do during their turn.
Note the illustrated guide to setting up a simple tracking system, as well as some example ‘everyday objects’ that players might employ. I also added some flavourful dialogue between two characters, to better illustrate how an item could define the theme for a round, and how another player might try to follow that theme.
I sent the document off to designer friends for feedback, as well as sharing regularly with Jacky and Shiquan and David. Our focus was on getting the rules as lean and clear as possible, and identifying where it was most useful to incorporate examples and flavour.
Now in the studio, and with input from Jacky and Shiquan, I played around with fonts and layout until we were satisfied with the visual communication of the rules. My teammates will make some new icons and images with which to decorate the rules over the coming weeks, but we don’t feel in a particular rush.
Going Forward
I plan on raising with the team the following idea:
Publishing the game on itch.io and disseminating it to friends, on social media and on Discord channels would give us the chance to gather feedback from the public. It has been difficult to organise a high number of playtests with our fellow coursemates, owing to time differences and not being in the same location, and so we’ve been making a lot of decisions fairly blind. While we’re happy with where the game has got to (in just four weeks!), we would love to balance it further.
A few thoughts that I have:
- Could more points be awarded for, say, everyone’s favourite antique, at the end?
- Modern Art has players exchanging money, unless they’re buying their own painting. Is this the system we should be using in AUCTIONEERS?
- Could a simple STEAL system be implemented? At the end of a round, players could pay 10 coins to STEAL another player’s ANTIQUE – as long as they can correctly identify it (at least one fact about the antique, and its name). If they fail, they lose only 5 of the 10 coins but receive no antique.
The data from mass playtesting would help us to discover whether or not these kinds of alterations are necessary, and also hopefully gather some broader opinions about the ruleset’s design.
We’re finished with the major development arc for now, and further alterations are likely to be minor. I will continue tweaking the visual presentation of the ruleset, with Jacky and Shiquan providing some more illustrations. We’ve resolved to revisit the game at the end of the year, and put the finishing touches on it before the holidays.
Example of Play: