Just Business Game Write-up
At the start of this unit, we were allowed to create any board game that we wanted. So Josh and I wanted to step outside the box a little, Team Evac. created a game called Just Business. This is a game for 20-30 year-olds, you and three other interns fight to gain a position at your dream company. Use traps to sabotage your opponents but be careful, these traps can also hurt you. You perform daily tasks each day to prove your usefulness to the company; if you fail three of these tasks then you will get fired.
My group's goal for this game is to attract the Joker, Competitor, and Performer player types. Joker because this game is fun and can make you laugh or your friends laugh because of decisions made in the game. Competitor because everyone wants that position so each person tries to win rather than rush through. Performer because this game can be a "hey look at me I have no strikes" kind of deal.
Josh and I had a few issues when coming up with the idea, a big issue was player movement, balance in terms of how many jobs/tasks to people to rooms available. We had an issue with how we should use the traps.
When we first thought of this idea, we had most of it mapped out; but we didn't know how they were going to move around the board. We thought about dice but it would be dumb for the game we were going for. We then tried room cards, these cards had a job on them that was in a dedicated room; that idea became the final product.
At the start of this game, we had to think of all of the ways that players could abuse the system; it was tough to weed out the bad and keep the good. When we playtested this game, at first we were 2 people playing 4 characters but it then went to just 1 player vs 1 player. We decided as a whole that this game should be 4 players and here's why. This game has many strategic elements that would play an interesting roll if everyone was trying to figure out what everyone else is thinking. Finding out what 3 other people are thinking is a way bigger challenge than finding out what 1 person thinking. When we playtested this we had a board that was built for 2 players but we used 4 instead, this caused some unexpected results like players unable to place traps and also almost every job was being done every round.
Traps became a big issue because they were the main mechanic, we wanted a way for the player to think of themselves and their enemies at the same time but it's hard to think of that right away. We thought of the idea of having traps and fake traps, you're forced to place one but your opponents don't know which one. This forces you to take risks; a game of trust.
On the day of the playtest I felt very confident but also a little nervous because I wasn't sure how people would react. I was very happy to be right, when people read the rule sheet they knew what to do immediately and started playing.
When the first group tested the game they were very interactive with one another; they tried to figure out one another's personality so they could tell if their lying or not. When they finished they told us that it was a very fun game and they honestly didn't have really any feedback to give.
When the second group tested the game we were surprised to see the same result, they interacted with one another trying to figure out the lie. It was a very close round and people from other playtests gathered around group 2 to watch. They suggested having some cards with text at the bottom like switch 2 traps that aren't yours or something like that.
What I wished for this game is that we should have given the jobs more meaning, at the moment their just spaces that you go to progress the game.
For my development process, I believe that we made a simple but creative idea but I think we spent too much time trying to balance and make it fun that we took away from the tasks that I mentioned above, I think that we played it enough it's hard to add stuff to something that you like. I think the number of times that Josh and I met up was reasonable to complete this project, nothing felt one-sided and we both put in our weight.
