Week 1[]
This week's goal was to come up with a game and come as far as to make and test at least a first prototype. We had a number of ideas that we discussed, and finally settled for David's idea: The game is played on a grid board, the 9 middle grids make up castle that 2 players will defend from 2 attacking players. All 4 players control several units each, all players must try to gather resources from different nodes outside the castle. The resources are used to upgrade castle defenses or attack units.
when we finally finished a first prototype, we only needed to play for 10 minutes to understand that the resource gathering was slow, boring, and only distracted from the actual siege of the castle.
We never actually got any longer than 10 minutes into the game because of the flawed movement gathering system, and never tried out the combat as we would have liked to. However, since we got things to iterate on from the short test, I'd say it's justified.
Week 2[]
This week we set out to revise the movement system, and have a new working prototype for Friday's playtesting. We decided to scrap the grid board and resource gathering entirely, instead we focused the siege of the castle. We narrowed down the amount of resources to just gold, and gave each player a steady income instead of nodes to run between. Since the grids were gone, we came up with a new system for attacking the castle. The result was similar to a tower defense; attacking units march along 4 different lanes towards the middle of the castle. The castle have spots for 4 towers that can attack incoming units (similar to a tower defense game).
After some debate, we decided that instead of having one attacking and one defending team, each player would control their own castle, making it a symmetric game, and allowing for a varying amount of players. During these major changes, we decided to add the aesthetic goal, that players would plot and negotiate, since all players could now decide which player to attack at which time, and there were no longer any premade teams.
While playtesting this week, we noticed that the player defenses were much too powerful, and killing a player was nearly impossible. We tried to solve this by adding more powerful options for the offensive (such as a mantlet that will protect other attackers from harm). Ironically, as we were making new card types, a few boosts to the defense manage to slip in, and when the other groups tested our game, the defending side was even more powerful than before.
Week 3[]
To iterate on the problem with the overpowered defense, we decided to change how cards were available. Originally, there was one pile of "offensive" cards, and one of "defensive", and the player could pick 2 cards of their own choice each round. We replaced the "defense" pile with a "utility" pile, mixing all cards that weren't tower upgrades or attack units. The "offensive" pile then exclusively contained attacking units, and all tower upgrade cards were gained from losing hit points. The point of this change was to limit how much you could upgrade your base's defenses, making them more vulnerable, ultimately making the game progress faster. It would also force the players to play more aggressively, since they would get offensive cards on their hands no matter which pile they picked the cards from.
We also changed how base towers and their upgrades work. Instead of going back to being an invulnerable base tower when a upgraded tower is destroyed, the tower spot is resets to nothing. Base towers can now be bought with money without a base tower card. This was also a change we made to make bases more vulnerable.
During the feedback session, it was proven to us once again, that the defense was still too strong. Players felt the utility cards were more rewarding than the attack cards, and there were very few attacking units put into play.
Week 4[]
Previously, players had only been picking utility cards, since they were the most powerful. To solve this, we finally went for a quite cheap solution that we had been avoiding for some time, to force players to pick one of each (attack and utility) card, instead of allowing them to choose themselves. This takes away some of the control from the player, but ensures that they have combat units to attack with. Ultimately, this pushes the player towards attacking, since they will always get attack units on her hand, to send out, though it takes away the freedom to choose how you want to balance between attack and defense. However, I believe it will do more good than harm. After all, if we would have managed to balanced the game to make the player want both attack and utility cards each round, as we wanted to, it wouldn't have made that much of a difference anyway.
To finally reward players for attacking, to not make them hold back, we also made the card from the hit point pile go to the attacker instead of the defender. Previously, players never had any control over attacking units after placing them, to spare players the trouble of keeping track of which attacking units were theirs. However, now we needed players to know which units were theirs, since they were to get cards when their units damage another player. To solve this, we added the function of taging lanes. To place attacking units in a lane, you had to tag it first, thus signifying that you were attacking on that particular lane. Thus, when a units reaches the center, you only have to look at the tag to see which player had sent it.
The critique we received at the feedback session was mainly positive. Players were happy about the changes we've made, and felt that the problems of the defense being overpowered was gone. Now, when people were not only thinking about keeping themselves alive, players started began plotting and making pacts. And so, one of our main aesthetic goals were finally accomplished.