Car(d) Chase Game Write-up

Car(d) Chase Board Game Write Up

At the start of this unit, we were randomly assigned topics based on our group number. My partner Christian and myself are group 5, are group name is Evil Leprechaun Entertainment and the topic we made was a Simulation game for 30-40-year-olds. 

The game that we worked on for the last week and a half is called Car(d) Chase, this is a game where a criminal is running from a cop. Traffic plays a role in the process of this game, it makes you coin flip to see whether or not you hit traffic. Movement is a key part of this game, you move with 3 playing cards but after each card move, it alternates movement between the cop and criminal. 

My group's goal for this game was to attract the Storytellers because we gave backstory to the characters in different scenarios, we also were attempting to attract the Craftsman because our game requires strategic thinking and problem-solving skills. 

Christian and I encountered a few problems when creating Car(d) Chase. Some of these were how the player should move, what the character cards should be, and how to create the board. I'll go into more detail now.

Player movement was a big topic of discussion because we didn't want something that was super simple but we didn't want it to be a massive hassle to move. We tried dice but decided against it because it's way too random in a chase game. The solution that we came up with was a 3-card movement system where when you move with 1 card your opponent moves with 1 card. This balanced the game to where the other player was never too far behind and they always have a chance to catch up. 

Christian and I thought of the great idea of putting in cop and criminal perks, we thought long and hard about what they should be because we didn't want the traits feeling busted so we made 3 traits for each class. For example, Coffee and Donuts for the cop: It allows the cop to coin flip traffic before he makes a move so he can plan accordingly. Bank Robbery in Change for the criminal: It allows the criminal to throw a bag of change behind him to act as unavoidable traffic for the cop this gives the criminal a little lead.

We were carefully deciding how to create the board so that it didn't feel too unbalanced for 1 side. We thought that if we gave them only 1 exit that it would be a very boring game of cat and mouse so we decided to give the players 2 choices of escape with a few ways to get there. We added the traffic spots to make the game a little more interesting. 

When we wrote the rule sheet we were trying to think of every outcome that people could think of so we ended up making the rule sheet a little confusing.

On the day of the playtest we were confident that the game was is working order but we were very wrong. When people read our rule sheet they looked like they had a general idea but got confused on little details like when moving you alternate but instead 1 group moved all 3 cards at once, so we had to explain and clarify missing parts in the rules. 

When the first group tested the game we saw an immediate problem in are design, there was nothing stopping the cop or criminal from changing direction so group 1 prolonged the game by 10 minutes. 

When group 2 tested it they also had a general idea for the rules but didn't count correctly when it came to movement, this resulted in 2 very short rounds because the criminal lost to unlucky traffic roles.

 From both groups we were given feedback, they told us to add some more mechanics, improve the character cards, have different spaces do different things, and also reduce how random it is.

What I wish that we did for this project before the playtest would have been adjusting the rules a little more because not everything was explained that well and I would have wanted more detail. 

For my development process, I believe that we made a creative game it's just again we didn't play it enough. This time I got to meet with my group member 2 times a week and we always chatted over messenger, Christian's schedule wasn't super cluttered so I had more opportunities to meet up with him.