Forewarning: Blogger did not save over two hours of work on this post so I am angrily rewriting the majority of this.
Over the course of two weeks, I developed a prototype board game.
The game consists of two opposing thieves who compete to steal gold
from a bank and return it to their respective get-away vans. Meanwhile,
the cop, a non-player character is on his way to the scene of the crime.
Players must return to their vans before the cop arrives or else they
are arrested and keep none of the gold they have collected.
The game was developed in a series of three development/play sessions.
Session 1
For the first prototyping session, I worked with another classmate to develop the basis for my board game. At the beginning we had no idea what to make, but we knew what we had: poker chips, dice and paper. Contemplating brought us nowhere, so I drew a board with a circle in the center that looked like this
We decided that in the middle there would be gold that you could collect. This would be done by ending your turn on the center tile. Movement based upon a die roll seemed to make sense, so we used that. I reasoned that gold is heavy, and therefor each gold you carried would be a -1 to you roll. This is one core mechanic of the game that remained all the way through to the final iteration of the game. To score gold, it needs to be returned to your side.
Next I wanted to add some player interaction, so I added a stealing mechanic. At this point, the stealing mechanic was rather unrefined and needed a lot of changes. Stealing could occur anywhere on the board, even stealing from opponent's scored pile was allowed. Scoring was successful with a single round of Rock Paper Scissors, and would take all the gold that the opponent was carrying, with no consequences for losing. This made stealing too overpowered and really the only decent strategy.
Session 2
Before play testing my prototype again, I made a few changes. By this time I noticed that the game was basically bank robbery themed, so I called the center tile the bank, and placed a get-away van at the players' starting positions. I realized that the game needed some kind of end point, so I added a non-player character, the cop. The cop would move one space closer to the bank with each player's turn. Once the cop arrived, anyone not safely back in their van would be arrested and lose all their gold.
I wanted to balance the stealing mechanic, so I removed the ability to steal from the opponent's van, and I made a successful steal only worth one gold piece. This helped to make stealing less overpowered, but during the class play session, I noticed that stealing would still occur turn after turn after turn.
Session 3
At this point, I finally got the stealing mechanic right. I made stealing only possible while in the bank, and I created a negative consequence for failed attempts. On a failed steal attempt, the opponent can roll the die and move you in either direction, dismissing the weight of gold you are carrying. I also changed the winning conditions from a single round of Rock Paper Scissors to best of three. With these changes, the mechanic actually became fun and properly balanced.
Then, I realized that there needed to be a way to drop gold in case you ended up carrying too much to move. I added the ability to drop the entire amount of gold you are carrying, which would make it available to the opponent. I set the maximum carry limit at three gold tokens. These changes made new strategies possible. Then I made the bottom four spaces near the van red, meaning it was not safe to leave gold there. If the cop arrived and gold was in a red space, it would leave a trail of evidence to your van, resulting in arrest. Two blue spaces were added closer to the bank, where it would be safe to leave piles of gold, but which were further from your van, and closer to the opponent.
Lastly, with many new strategies possible, the play-time needed to be extended. I changed the cop's movement from once every turn to once every round. To make the end of the game more exciting, I made the cop's movement starting at space 21 be variable. Based on a die roll, he would move either zero spaces or two spaces. To ensure at least one winner at the end, I made the cop arrest only the closest player to him. With these changes, the game actually began to be fun. I'm happy with how it turned out.
