Blog 3: Paper Prototype

Introduction

The board game I designed with a partner in class was initially going to be an area-control game due to recent inspiration from playing Risk. However, I decided to nix that idea after the example in class was an area-control game and I felt it would be unoriginal to pursue that same genre. 

However, I did take an element of the area-control to build upon and tried to make something new from it. 

The game my partner (Alani) and I very haphazardly pieced together with our mismatched assortment of game pieces and craft supplies was initially called Lifeline. Upon further introspection and re-examination of the game, I decided to name it Heartstrings. 

Basics of the Game

Heartstrings is a simple game--players take turns to roll a 12-sided die to occupy "rooms" with their tokens and slowly fill the board. Whenever a player rolls into a room already occupied by the opponent (the "attacker" invades the "defender"), combat by way of dice-roll ensues (both players roll a standard die to determine the winner). I realize this sounds awfully like an area-control/expansion game, but I promise it isn't.

The goal of the the game isn't to occupy a majority of the rooms, nor is it to control a certain "victory" room, but rather to chip away at the health of your opponent. The board setup is just a slightly convoluted and randomized way to simulate combat encounters between players. Whenever a player loses in combat, they lose health from their "Heartstring", which is simply a red pipe-cleaner with 12 black beads on it. The black beads represent how much health you have (each is called a "heart bead"). Once a player depletes all of their heart beads, the game is over and the other player wins. 

In the picture above, you can clearly see the layout of the board, the Heartstrings, and the blue and green player tokens. The 12-sided die is used to occupy rooms and each player has a regular 6-sided die to simulate combat. 

A closer look at the board reveals that a player can have multiple tokens in the same room if they roll the same room multiple times. This allows the defender multiple opportunities to defeat the attacker, but can also lead to the defender losing health multiple times from one attack. 

Here is another photo to get a better look at the game pieces:

Play-Tests

PT 1:

The first time I played the game was with Alani, my partner when I attended the Wednesday section.

In this play through, we decided that the damage that the loser in combat would take was to be equivalent to the difference of our dice rolls and that each Heartstring would start with 10 heart beads. After a rather uneventful start to the game where we slowly occupied the board, we finally began to invade each other's rooms. 

Alani would often win these battles, something that can only be attributed to ungodly levels of fortune and potentially some black magic. Three encounters in a row, she rolled a 6 (6-6-6?!) as an attacker and I rolled a 4, failing each time to beat her. I lost 6 heart beads in three turns. At this point, desperate to regain some dignity and in an effort to add some player choice to this mostly luck-driven game, we decided to allow a player to remove a piece from a room in which they had multiple tokens to regain two heart beads. 

After a few turns of regaining health and thinning out my presence on the board, Alani still kept managing to attack me with high numbers and my low defensive rolls quickly depleted my Heartstring. The final battle of the game was when she attacked a room with three of my tokens and she rolled a 5. All of my defenders rolled 2 or lower, swiftly bringing the game to an end. 

Reflections:

The game was over too quickly. Having the loser take damage equivalent to the roll difference was too brutal of a penalty. I decided to halve the amount of damage taken (if the result is a fraction, round up, i.e., [6-1]/2 = 2.5 -> 3). I could have also decided to double the number of heart beads to 20, but that would make set-up slightly annoying. I did decide to increase it from 10 to 12 to keep with the duodecimal nature of the game.

PT 2:

This time, I played with Andrew in class. I implemented the changes noted in my reflections after my bitter defeat and approached this new challenger with a renewed vigor. The game still started off rather slow as we rarely invaded each other's rooms in the early-game stages, but it picked up and we were soon embroiled in warfare nearly every turn. This game was much more even than the first play-test, as damage was lowered and we had opportunities to heal ourselves every turn by recalling tokens from overpopulated rooms. No monumental or heavily unbalanced plays took place this time, though my streak of bad luck continued and I still failed to score a single victory. My opponent beat me at my own game (a gesture I returned with relish when we play-tested his game, "Infection!").

Reflections:

While we both enjoyed playing Heartstrings v0.2, we still felt that it was lacking player-choice and that having so many rooms with no distinct characteristics was an area that could be improved upon. Andrew's feedback was really helpful and I decided to add some more features to the game. Certain rooms would now add buffs to either the attacker or defender and two rooms had an active health buff added as well. 

I added icons to the rooms with buffs. Excuse the poor artwork. Those are swords, shields, and hearts. 

PT 3:

For my final play-test, I challenged my roommate Brandon. He's a great guy. But I was determined to destroy him. I whipped out Heartstrings v0.3 and anticipated his positive response. He seemed wholly unimpressed and started criticizing my artistic choices to my chagrin. I took it in stride and set up the game. This time, we included the changes suggested after PT 2. We decided that rooms 3, 6, and 9 would give the attacker a buff of +1, +2, and +3 to their dice roll respectively. Rooms 4 and 8 provided a defense buff of +1 and +2. Rooms 1 and 12 were special rooms that allowed for passive health regeneration. Anytime a player lands in that room, they gain a heart bead. If an attacker invades an already occupied room 1 or 12, they only gain the heart bead after successfully defeating the defender. I managed to gain a considerable amount of health by occupying both rooms 1 and 12 with multiple tokens and felt pretty confident in my chances to win. Brandon seemed to have inherited my penchant for misfortune. He was usually on the defensive and failed to fend off my superior attacks. I put the poor sap out of his misery by invading room 6 (a room with +2 attack buff). Brandon had 3 tokens in this room, much to his dismay. I rolled a 6, giving me an attack of 8, and Brandon rolled two 1s and a 3. This gave him a combined damage of 11, clearing his Heartstring. I felt vindicated as this was my first victory at my own game. 

Reflections:

The game still needs a good amount of tweaking. The potential damage that can be done in the attack buff rooms is staggering and might need to be balanced. However, it isn't a very likely scenario and might be okay to leave as is, almost like a joker mechanic. I'll probably change it though. I still need to find a way to incorporate more player strategies and choice. I'm thinking of allowing players a way to re-roll rooms for tokens already on the board. Maybe by sacrificing one heart-bead, you can pick any token on the board to move... 

The game is still in its preliminary stages, so I expect a lot of brainstorming, play-testing, math, and logic to eventually transform Heartstrings into a great board game.