Prototype Postulation Practice

The Game

Sorry you lost it.

Over the past few weeks I’ve gone through some light brain activity coming up with ideas for games. I’m pretty... Slow. At least when it comes to designing a working game, even more so if it will be a fun game.
That being said, please accept my condolences for this experiment you’ll be participating in if you try this little game.
The game is called At Odds. It’s a very simple game, with pretty simple rules. Which I’ll explain later. First, here is what you’ll need to construct the game yourself. All the pieces should be relatively easy to find in a house that has games lying around.

You will need:

• A deck of cards. (Make sure to remove all the cards with numbers Ace - 3 and 9 - King, you can even just keep one card from 4-8 in a small pile, up to you.)
• Three to five dice. Depending on the quickness you want from the game. More dice leads to a faster game. Generally I use four.
• Paper to keep score! One sheet should be fine.
• (Optional) A dice cup or other surface for rolling dice. I know plenty of folks who can’t roll dice to save their life without rolling them off of the table. Save some back pain and additional squats by using a dice cup!

The cards!

The dice!

The finished product!

The end result.

Pretty simple, right? Right.
You know what else is simple? The rules of the game (okay maybe not):

• Whoever rolls the lowest on a d6 (six-sided die) goes first. Choose which order players play starting from that player amicably.
• The first player takes a face-down card from the deck and places it face-up in the center of the playing area. Repeat this process each time the first player’s turn comes up. 
• Each turn, that player rolls all the dice (however many you chose to have) then tallies up the amount. Afterward, get the quotient of your roll and the card (the amount of times your card divides evenly into the roll). Ignore the remainder. 
• For example, if I rolled 22 and my card is a seven, I have 3 sevens. This number you have is your points from that turn. With the previous example, I would get 3 points. 
• A player wins if they get a previously agreed-upon amount, in this case I usually stick with 13 since it’s odd and unlucky. 
• (Optional - Can make game longer) If a player would surpass the victory point threshold with one roll, they are instead bumped back to the beginning score plus the number of extra points they gained over 13. (12 pts + 4 roll = 3 points) 

This is pretty much the end of the normal part of my post. Below is a play log and report of how the development of the game progressed as I was working on its intricacies (what few there were).

Game Development Log

Play Log 9/13

The game "Seven" was created among Eduardo, Nick, Tiffany and I. Seven involved dealing each player random hands of cards, and having players take turns to play down their possible combinations that added up to 7 or subtracted down to -7. Solid game, good idea. Played very well.

Seven, in action!

Rules were implemented to enable players to acquire more points when they could play their whole hand to make a seven, and through other ideas.

Play Log 9/18

The game I tried this time was... Hum. I forgot the name of it now. Bother. But Daniel and I tried it out and fleshed out some of the conceptual ideas as we went along. It was a race-to-the-finish game involving powerups which were randomly added across the imaginary track. Players could get items to make them move further each turn, pull other players back, and even make other players or yourself reroll their movement roll.

It was quite enjoyable, and got me thinking about how to implement dice into a game I wanted to create. Mainly, At Odds.

The play went well, and we had some headway in trimming the rules as the playtests went on:

- Initial Rules:

- Revamped Rules #1:

(You know. I actually couldn't find my screenie of the 2nd draft of rules probably because I'm beautiful and overwrote them on accident when saving the screenie. Drat. The second one here should be missing rule 4 , 5 and 6.)

- Revamped Rules #2:

Play Log 9/30

After playing Catharsis, Word Wars, and Cavern Conundrum (and my game), I got a bit of inspiration. I haven't developed this game nearly as much as I would like to make it into a more fun and surprising game. As it is, it's too up to chance and has too little room for strategy, which is what I would like it to have a heavier basis around.

Development of At Odds:

The idea for my game stemmed from when Eduardo, Nick, Tiffany and I came up with the game "Seven." I have a fascination with prime numbers and odd numbers. So I wanted to do something different, I like chance games as well, so I felt dice should be incorporated.

Playtest 1 - Playtest with three players:

P1 roll - 6,6,4,4,2 = 22 : card -- 7 = 3 point(s)
P2 roll - 6,6,6,5,2 = 25 : card -- 3 = 0 point(s) (eight 3's)
P3 roll - 1,1,1,5,5 = 13 : card -- 8 = 1 point(s)

Progress Per Turn:
P1 : 0, 0, 0, 0, 3, 0
P2 : 0, 1, 3, 1, 1, 0
P3 : 1, 1, 0, 0, 5, 15 Winner!Assessment: 
Player 3 obviously wins when all five dice roll 15 when they get the Ace. The game obviously needs to be adjusted so instant-win mechanics are not as prominent.


Changelog:

• Removed all Aces, even numbered cards, and face cards.
• Cut down the dice being rolled to four.
• Players maintain a pulled card each round instead of each player. e.g. : P1 pulls a 7, each player rolls for 7s before a new card is chosen, to promote equality.

Playtest 2 - Next Session:


Progress Per Turn:
P1: 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 2, 0
P2: 5, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 5 Winner!
P3: 5, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 3, --


Assessment:
This game went much smoother and quicker than previously now that players didn't get stuck on absurdly high cards that were difficult to roll for. I need to think of a new mechanic for disabling the higher rolls like 5, like making low card matches worth less points. Will contemplate this and make changes. The changes to card deployment are much more friendly to players now. Will contemplate keeping a certain amount of even cards in just in case.


Changelog: 

• Re-added even cards 4 through 8.
• Removed cards less than 4 from the playing deck.

Playtest 3 - Last Session:

Progress Per Turn:

P1: 1, 0, 1, 0, 3, 1, 1

P2: 0, 3, 1, 0, 3, 5, 1 Winner!

Final Assessment:

The game works very well, it took little to no explanation of the rules for my new subject to play it efficiently. Since it's a game of chance, there isn't so much skill involved as other games, so one does not need to learn how to play quite as much. I felt like I needed to prolong the flow of the game for smaller amounts of players. Perhaps I will work on more mechanics to lengthen two-player games in the future.