Midterm Game Design Reflection

The midterm project was an amazing insight into the process of creating a playable game. It was much harder to successfully incorporate everything we’ve learned this semester into the game; between a narrative, rules, conflict, environment, and more, my group really had to focus to make the game work. We decided early on that we would want to use the subway map as a board, but it took us a while to figure out a storyline that would fit with the board. After throwing ideas back and forth, we finally decided to have an assassination game where the first player to reach 42^nd street would win the game. To make game play easy to understand, we assigned the boroughs as players. Each player was either Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, or the Bronx, and everyone had to make it to midtown Manhattan to win the game. We edited the subway lines to that each player would follow 1-2 subway lines to get to 42^nd street. 

Looking back now, I think it would have been better to just eliminate all the lines except for the ones we would use to play. By keeping the entire subway map intact, it was a little confusing as to where a player should move next. I think our system of rules was fairly well thought out. Players would roll a die to determine how many subway stops they went, and they could land on express stops or event stops. This made the typical game last for about 15 minutes, which is the targeted time we were looking for. At first we had 20 stops per player, but after playtesting we realized we should make it closer to 30.

Even though each player starts in a different borough, there are 26 stops for each subway thay they use. This ensures an equal playing field, so whatever borough you are doesn’t affect your change of winning. I made a key for the game using the actual MTA key, and I edited it to make personal to our game.

     This legend was my favorite part of making the game. Duncan and Gregory took care of the rules and the event cards and I took care of the visuals. Overall our group worked well together and we were all able to compromise and create an interesting game with a solid narrative and a working set of rules.