Reflection Questions

 What changed from your original idea? -

We had the original idea to have a chess-like game, but all of the pieces had different stats which would fight against each other. We did technically make that, but not in the way we had originally intended to; HP was going to be a stat as well as defense, but it only seemed to make it more confusing so we got rid of it. The idea of cards was also not apart of the original ideas, but was one of the strongest additions to the mechanics that we currently have. The stats weren't always going to be decided by dice rolls, but we couldn't deicide what else would determine the factors, so we went with dice rolls.

We based a lot off of the original mechanics of chess, though added our own spin onto the game by adding the card mechanics, but we also changed the size/shape of the board, along with adding another piece to spice up the gameplay. Some of the first stats we came up with for the pieces (a example being the queen) had to be re-done and balanced out to make sure they are not too powerful. The queen used to be able to pretty much challenge any piece and win, our nerfs made her a lot more fair.

How well did you work as a team?

I would say we worked pretty well as a team. During development we all had different roles to fill and we all did an equal amount of playtesting as well as giving good ideas to add to our game. Emelia (Dunno how you spell her name sorry) helped a lot when developing the cards and giving us ideas, Cam was very helpful with writing the card descriptions down and helping with art on cards where it was needed. I helped with different aspects of designing the cards, rarities for cards and giving ideas about how we could make the game better/make it more balanced. My only issue would be is they are a little too eager with ideas, games are fine when they are simple, but the two seemed like they wanted to keep making it more and more complex, over the already difficult to learn mechanics.

What would you do different?

I don't personally think we should've made the board bigger, i think adding a new piece was a good idea, but having increased the board seemed to spawn this idea that more pieces was a good thing to have. Though at the end of it, the big issue was that we had way too many pieces on the board, on top of keeping track of them with any equip cards you add to them. It just made it all too complex to explain to any new player. So if we did do this differently, i think we should've replaced the original pieces with our own new ones, and not kept many of the old ones, apart from the king and queen, pawns maybe.

How do you think the development of the game fit the original brief?

I think our development fit the brief fairly well. We developed our game but abit slowly for how we should've. We should have come up with a more simple game and playtest it, then slowly adding to it like that. Instead we kept coming up with new ideas before we got the chance to playtest it, meaning that when the time came, we had a lot to reflect on. This wasn't too much of an issue, i just think if we had stayed a little closer to what the brief told us to do, development would've been a lot smoother than it turned out to be.

If you were to do it again what would you do?

I would remake the game entirely. I like what we came up with, but during development we thought of some better ways we could've pulled it off, but at that point we were too deep in to our idea. I think we should've had some sort of deck building mechanic, so you can have cards which work with certain pieces, but you can choose them at the start of the game and adapt a strategy because of them. For example you could make a deck which is based around buffing your pawns, or a deck which focuses on giving your opponent de-buffs. I would also remove the dice mechanic of deciding if a piece is taken or not. At first i thought this idea would be a fun twist on what was a strategy game, but it's a flawed mechanic when it comes down to the final details.

If you had more time what would you add?

Like I said before, I would've added a deck building concept instead of just pulling a card whenever you kill something, you start with a deck of your choice which can be focused on certain aspects of the game. I really don't think i would've added much more, instead i would've liked to take stuff away instead. I think the game was way too complicated, and i just wish we'd dumbed it down instead constantly adding more and more things to it.