Week 09 - Reflection

Our game, Star Cards, was a fusion between Bartok and Uno in which players were given the task to leave the card game with no cards left in their hand. Similar to Uno, players can use different cards to obtain a different advantage over their opponent. However, depending on the initial card given to the player, they would be put in two separate teams. No matter how many players were on a given team, each team had to have zero cards when leaving the game. I believe this mechanic was our strongest when considering all the elements that went into designing Star Cards. While this mechanic was definitely the strongest concept we had, it was difficult to come to this decision. Rather, it was difficult to balance the game around this concept considering the probability of the game turning into a 1 versus 4.

Much like Garfield’s struggle to balance the game of Magic: the Gathering, we often found ourselves testing whatever came to mind in the hopes of balancing the game. While Magic: the Gathering eventually settled on colors of magic with their pros and cons, we eventually would settle on the face cards balancing the game. When played in the right hand, cards such as the Queen card could instantly give a solo player the advantage to win the game. While we didn’t work with over 4000 cards, it was a significant task to design and construct the face cards to be both balanced and fair no matter how the teams played out.

In a way, our game emulated what Garfield faced when designing cards under the pretense of risk. “No card should ever be at risk unless players choose to play for ante.” We designed our Queen card to be a gamble that in playtesting ended working sort of similar to a trump card. The game never forces the player to play the Queen card, however, if the player chooses to do so and played right, the reward will greatly outweigh the risk.

In terms of Altice’s chapter on playing card platforms, I think we found his concept on ordinal super helpful when designing Star Cards. Much like the inspiration the game came from, we kept the idea of matching suites and colors for players to discard cards. Where we decided to diverge was decided to limit the players to a certain suite or color depending on their team. We thought it was best to limit that ordinal pattern that allows players to play any card they want. The intent was to balance the game, but it actually ended up making the game more confusing. In the end, we decided it was best to revert to the original ordinal pattern after playtesting. Playtesters often didn’t know which card to play and it dragged out the game way longer than expected. We simplified the game in that aspect but it didn’t steal from the already strong team composition tactic.