Group 14
Kitchen Clash
Kitchen clash is a food based strategy game for an audience of elementary aged children. Players play as the food or the pests and must battle for control of the fridge and pantries using their skills and luck of the die.
The game development went well as both members of the group did our tasks adequately. I primarily worked on the rules of the game and supplying all game components. I made the board design and later the board we used for the final play-test.
I also acquired all the components and dice for the game.
I also made the rules for the game and created the "story" and primary conflict between food and pests. My group partner worked more on the assignments and in play-test note-taking alongside helping the direction of the game. The first issue we ran into was game scope as I wanted to make the game larger and more complex but my project partner reminded me of our target audience and I tempered the complexity of the game due to that.
During the first play-test we learned that the game was not yet simple enough as play-testers did not have enough time to complete a match of the game due to rules complexity. After this setback we worked on improving the rules. We gutted the game's resource system. The resource system worked off of the two "pantry" tiles and each provided currency which players could spend to make units, get more currency generation, or gain victory points towards winning the game. This was too complex and we reduced it to only giving a static amount of new units each round. We also reduced the amount of victory points needed to win the game from five to seven.
Originally the game needed three victory points to win but that was too fast. There were several other changes made in early development prior to the first play test to make the game slower and more thoughtful. The tiles in the center row such as the fridge and pantry originally could hold more units with the pantries holding five rather than three, the fridge holding ten rather than seven, and the tiles in between holding three rather than two.
In addition to gutting the resource system and making it slightly faster we also worked on fool-proofing the wording of rules to reduce confusion and make the game easier to learn. Unfortunately this was not enough and players still misunderstood key rules and some important interactions were not properly clarified. Notably players were confused about how many units they could move per turn. In addition the point in the turn when combat took place was not clarified confusing players. Looking back a phase system would have been helpful for players. Players did overall seem to enjoy the game even the often extremely random combat system. In fact players enjoyed the randomness of the combat system as it mitigated skill and allowed for players who were behind to catch up.
Both members of our group performed well in my opinion despite some trouble early on. I learned a lot about game design and play-testing from this game. I plan on focusing on making the game as simple as possible in the future to reduce learning time and minimize rule edge cases. One of the most annoying parts about writing a rule sheet for a paper game is the edge cases. Their are so many strange interactions that occur in a game as simple as Kitchen clash that it would make the rule-sheet be significantly longer if they were added at least 50% and that is if I can realize and remember what they are. I look forward to my next project and using all my accumulated knowledge to make an even better game. This has also helped me learn valuable tricks and ideas to use in my own game I am working on on the side.
Kitchen Clash
Kitchen clash is a food based strategy game for an audience of elementary aged children. Players play as the food or the pests and must battle for control of the fridge and pantries using their skills and luck of the die.
The game development went well as both members of the group did our tasks adequately. I primarily worked on the rules of the game and supplying all game components. I made the board design and later the board we used for the final play-test.
During the first play-test we learned that the game was not yet simple enough as play-testers did not have enough time to complete a match of the game due to rules complexity. After this setback we worked on improving the rules. We gutted the game's resource system. The resource system worked off of the two "pantry" tiles and each provided currency which players could spend to make units, get more currency generation, or gain victory points towards winning the game. This was too complex and we reduced it to only giving a static amount of new units each round. We also reduced the amount of victory points needed to win the game from five to seven.
Originally the game needed three victory points to win but that was too fast. There were several other changes made in early development prior to the first play test to make the game slower and more thoughtful. The tiles in the center row such as the fridge and pantry originally could hold more units with the pantries holding five rather than three, the fridge holding ten rather than seven, and the tiles in between holding three rather than two.
In addition to gutting the resource system and making it slightly faster we also worked on fool-proofing the wording of rules to reduce confusion and make the game easier to learn. Unfortunately this was not enough and players still misunderstood key rules and some important interactions were not properly clarified. Notably players were confused about how many units they could move per turn. In addition the point in the turn when combat took place was not clarified confusing players. Looking back a phase system would have been helpful for players. Players did overall seem to enjoy the game even the often extremely random combat system. In fact players enjoyed the randomness of the combat system as it mitigated skill and allowed for players who were behind to catch up.
Both members of our group performed well in my opinion despite some trouble early on. I learned a lot about game design and play-testing from this game. I plan on focusing on making the game as simple as possible in the future to reduce learning time and minimize rule edge cases. One of the most annoying parts about writing a rule sheet for a paper game is the edge cases. Their are so many strange interactions that occur in a game as simple as Kitchen clash that it would make the rule-sheet be significantly longer if they were added at least 50% and that is if I can realize and remember what they are. I look forward to my next project and using all my accumulated knowledge to make an even better game. This has also helped me learn valuable tricks and ideas to use in my own game I am working on on the side.
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