Board Game Development

 We started out our development process with the idea of creating a board game version of the Steam game, FPS Chess. Because of this idea, we started with the base game of Chess and thought about how we would be able to add the FPS aspects to a board game. We decided after a short period of time, that using dice and giving cards stats would be the best way to do this, however, we initially had different numbers of the same dice being rolled for every piece. This is something we have changed over the course of the development, as we now use a full 7 dice set to allow for more variety and balancing in the stats of our pieces.

At this point of development, we were still using our initial dice choice, but we had thought about using some sort of cards to allow for abilities and events to happen, as well as stat changes. Here is where we differed from just FPS Chess and looked more into YuGiOh as inspiration for a card based combat system.

We spent a long time coming up with card ideas and working out how we would size them and lay them out, eventually coming to our original 6.5cm by 9 cm cards that were split into 4 segments, for the name, rarity icon, description, and artwork. We quickly realised that these cards were a bit too small, as the space for the card descriptions would require near unreadable writing, and that we could make a template on photoshop and print them off, instead of handmaking every one. Using Photoshop, we quickly made a template for each rarity that provided more space for the card descriptions and art, measuring 7cm by 10 cm instead.

While Emelia and Evan started playtesting our new 7 dice dice system, I wrote down the names and descriptions of the cards and created the first deck of cards for our game. We then used these cards in our next playtest to see how they performed and how they changed the game. We found that they were surprisingly balanced and improved the flow of the game massively. After this play test, we photocopied this deck of cards, as the intention was that each player would have their own set of cards and did another playtest with both players having their own set of cards. Again we found no major balance issues, but did decide that only one of each card should be able to be equipped to a piece, and that a piece should only be able to have 3 cards equipped to it at once.

After this playtest and completing our few changes, we realised that we were still just making chess with some changes. This is when we decided to create our own piece and use a bigger board for our game. We quickly came up with a new piece, the pikeman, who moves in a way similar to the combination of a knight and a bishop. We created stats for this piece and at the same time, made an expanded board to use.

We were still thinking that our game was too similar to Chess, so we decided that it would be interesting if we used the extra space from our bigger board to allow for more customisation in the setup of pieces. The pawn line remains in the 3rd row, and the king and queen must start in the same place, but the rest of the pieces are up to the player. There is an indicator on our board to show where the pieces must be placed behind at the start of the game.

We have now playtested this new board a few times and are finding nothing wrong with the fundamentals of the new piece, bigger board, or game in general. We have found, however, that we need some more variety in our card sets, as many cards do the same thing and there are only two piece unique effects, both of which are for the pawns.

Reflection:

We have stuck with the core concept we initially had, a combat (FPS) style chess game, but have vastly expanded upon it, adding in a new piece, a bigger board, a card system and changing our dice system from what we had initially said.

We worked effectively as a team and each had a job that we stuck to and got done. We had some small disputes over things but quickly came to agreements and kept working through them.

If we were to do this again, I would like to make more of a solid idea before we started development, as many things we did would require many changes.

I think the development of our game fit the brief quite well, even though it may not have originally. We have created our own game using chess as our concept and have taken some inspiration from other board and card games that we have played. We kept adapting and updating our game during development as we found issues with what was happening and have now mostly ironed out the problems that we were having.

If we had more time, I would have loved to have completed the art on the cards and give them a design on the back. I would have also liked to have more cards implemented into our system with some more unique and situational effects, as well as possibly adding some form of deck building to help increase the diversity of each game.