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Sprint 4 Devlog

Iteration - We changed the main combat system to be one hit per turn for both the player and enemies. We initially wanted to avoid this because it would increase the amount of time you have to spend to play the game but due to a lot of feedback from players that it was too complex for them to understand we ultimately decided it would be best to change it. We simplified the rule explanations in the rulebook that blind playtesters mentioned which we all thought was good to be set in stone but this obviously was not the case. And added spaces that the deck should be placed at when drawing from it and a place to put the discarded cards. Also, the damage and health of the green and purple enemies were increased by one due to concerns about them being too easy to defeat.

Playtest Sessions - The blind playtest was probably the most valuable playtest we had because the players didn't take it easy on us because we were in their class. This provided valuable insight that we wouldn't have had if we only had people from our class playtest our game. As mentioned previously we changed the combat system due to this feedback and again simplified the rules even more as well as reformatted them to make them easier to read instead of them just being a wall of text.

Artwork - In the final iteration of the board I added color to the map-based items that were drawn on it to add more contrast and be able to see them better when sitting at odd angles. This included making the hearts red, coloring the teleportation portals blue, making the treasure chests brown and light brown along with grey for the locks, and finally coloring the "walls" grey fully. The resin prints are also done but do need some cleanup as the process of removing the supports caused some parts of the minis to be broken and or not be printed entirely so in the future they should be scaled up and re-printed.

Challenges and Solutions - We mainly faced the challenge of whether or not we should change the core mechanic for battling in our game as it's what everything is centered around but we had to in order to make players fully understand how to play our game so we did it. The other challenge was taking apart the feedback we got from the blind playtesters and using it effectively to improve our game. Initially, the feedback wasn't very clear and was hard to use but when our devs talked to them in person they went back and added much more detail to everything.

Reflection - We changed our main gameplay mechanic, we received some not-so-useful feedback which then turned useful, and we added some color to the board to make parts stand out. The blind playtest really opened our eyes as to what was really wrong with our game and we came out of it with a better understanding of what to fix.

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These are the new cards we added to the deck to add more options and complexity to the game

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These are the fully printed character pieces. They were printed in resin but some parts like the bow for the archer and the knife for the rogue didn't come out well or just didn't print so they were cut off.

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This is the final rendition of the board that will be presented for the final class of the semester

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Sprint 3 Devlog

Iteration - We added new teleportation spaces on the board that let players teleport to any other space that is on the board to increase the moveability(?) of pieces which was directly made from previous feedback instead of making it our own version. We also added player trading so that players could trade for cards that they drew that weren't very useful or to mutually increase the power of their load-outs. In addition to these two we tested out a number of newer cards to increase the amount of things a player could do and we changed some health and damage numbers of enemies around and added 4 more basic enemies to the board.

Playtest Sessions - What we gathered from the playtest sessions was that we needed to add parts to the rules that told you to hold onto enemy pieces you defeat, the shield was still busted, the greed card should be a draw 3 cards and pick 1 from them, specify the order in which cards are used (example: the shield is used first to negate damage then chest piece), make it so that you cannot take the basic sword everyone gets at the start of the game, make an icon legend for the spaces on the board, and do something about drawing upgrade cards when you don't have the prerequisite to them in your loadout.

Artwork - I started 3d printing the player pieces I modeled but was unable to finish them in time for players to use during a playtest. However, when I did finish them I saw many points of weakness on the minis that caused parts to break off or that were just too small to really notice which means I will have to spend more time on future models to resize things differently. Other than that the artwork on the new cards stayed consistent with the older cards so props to Daniel for that.

Challenges and Solutions - The biggest challenges we faced I would say were the cards still not being balanced in some areas but they were at least better than the older cards and there were some typos on them that we hadn't noticed before. Other than that the game is at a very good stage with only small things needing to be changed that are very easy to do.

Reflection - We introduced new cards to the pool of existing cards, found out we still need to work out some kinks in a few of them, got the player minis printed, and had some parts break off which says to me that I still have a ways to go to get a perfect print. Our playtest sessions went smoothly and took up less time than usual and we added some more enemies and a new map space to increase moveability(?).

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This is the model for the archer mini a player can choose to have as their character

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This is the model for the knight mini a player can choose to have as their character

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This is the model for the wizard mini a player can choose to have as their character

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This is the model for the rogue mini a player can choose to have as their character

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This is the third iteration of the board we developed

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Sprint 2 Devlog

Iteration - The major thing that we changed due to the feedback after the second sprint was fixing the map so that it had an odd number of spaces so that no one side was at a disadvantage when you started the game. Secondly, we added spaces that let players receive healing when they passed over or landed on it as well as chests that function the same way but you get to draw a card from the deck which helps players who are falling behind catch up

Playtest Sessions - During the playtests the testers identified small things we forgot to include in the rules like who goes first in the game for example. They also mentioned the pace of the game was really slow due to people having to figure out how much damage they take and how much they do.

Artwork - The overall art for the board was cleaned up and we specifically took our time with measurements and spacing and symmetry so no one player has an advantage when it comes to the placement of the items on the spaces. Work is still being done for the player pieces and enemies though.

Challenges and Solutions - We still struggled with procrastination but not as much as last time. The game is at a stage where we only have to worry about very small stuff but balancing for the cards is proving to be especially difficult.

Reflection - Overall this sprint was easier than the last, all we really have to worry about is making everything look professional and making pieces for the players and enemies and doing a bit of balancing with the cards

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This is the second iteration of the board we went with, the plus in the middle was later changed after this picture was taken so players technically didnt play this version but like 90% of it was unchanged

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The artist drew us up this as a sort of design philosophy we could follow for making the final player pieces. We wanted to emphasize the cartoonish nature that we were going for with the game

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First set of cards

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Iteration 1 of the board

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Sprint 1

Iteration - During the first sprint and after playtesting we decided to redesign the board to make it more like a chess board or scrabble with certain spaces blocked off so they are like walls. We kept the core gameplay with drawing cards and having load-outs of cards but we decided to table the PVP part of the game for later and focus on the PVE part of the game as that's what players would be doing most of the time.

Playtest Sessions - The playtest sessions largely gave similar feedback with players noting that the paper prototype board was uneven (my fault), the board wasn't big enough, some cards didn't make sense, and finally that you could basically become immortal if you had enough cards that blocked damage. We (the developers) noticed that the rules were a huge area of improvement as a lot of things we tried explaining to the players through them didn't come across as we intended which led to players playing our game wildly different than we had intended.

Artwork - This is where we really shined while making the game. Daniel did the art for the cards while I assembled them and made the board. The cards though steal the show with the basic but still interesting designs of the various items depicted on the cards. There were some troubles with the adhesive used on the cards as it spilled over a bit and caused the cards to be slightly sticky but only to other cards, nothing got on anyone's hands. We also met with an artist to discuss the directions we could go in for the game later on.

Challenges and Solutions - The main challenges we faced were procrastination and playtesting. The first part is obvious but to elaborate on the second part, we struggled at the beginning with the playtesting due to a misunderstanding of the directions so we had to rush playtesting.

Reflection - In this week we made a huge change to the board, totally removed 2 cards due to player feedback, procrastinated, separated the PVP to deal with in a different sprint so we could perfect combat, and finally met with an artist who gave us some ideas for the final sprint when it came to the design and aesthetics.

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Introduction - Dungeon Brawl

Core Mechanics - Rolling dice to decide movement, killing progressively harder enemies, fighting players, choosing from a selection of cards to add to your loadout to increase your power, passing over or landing on either health spaces to regain health or chest spaces where you can draw one card to add to your loadout

Theme - Fantasy, semi-cartoonish, also D&D in a way

Inspiration - The main inspiration behind this game is from the games Munchkin's and Yu-Gi-Oh/Magic The Gathering

Duration and player count - The expected duration is around 15 ish minutes with a player count of 2 to 4 players