- Given that each player has some hidden information, how to give them incentives to progress the game?
- This is an important question to answer because without it, the game would fall into a deadlock, and no player would like to continue. It will become boring and deviate our original design objectives.
- We will add the mechanics to draw cards, and let certain player share something, so for sure making progress.
- My guess is that it will turn out well. Especially since we also have an advanced mode, where players can make up their characters/cards on their own.
- How to make sure the game is balanced?
- The balance of the game is very important, since the underlying feature of our game is similar to Mafia, where there will be teams. If the game is not balanced, at least one team will get bored due to “too hard”, and probably another team will get bored due to “too easy”.
- In the basic mode of the game, we will provide a set of characters to make sure this configuration is balanced for the game to continue. To ensure it, we will perform some play-testing. We cannot control the advanced mode, so probably adding some guidance on how to design characters might be helpful.
- In the basic mode, I’m not sure whether everything will make out well, given the limited time for us to produce the game. From my past experience, when play-testing a new configuration, such as in Werewolf, it usually needs hundreds of rounds, but this is clearly not possible for our game. So the only thing we can do is to try our best to ensure the balance. In contrast, in the advanced mode, the theoretical guidance might work out well.
- Do we need to develop an online version of the game?
- This is important especially in this post-COVID era. People are used to work and socialize remotely with the prosperity of online tools such as Zoom. There are so many online game platforms for games like Avalon and Werewolf. It seems that it’s not a bad idea to follow the trend.
- We can probably try to develop the online game mod, or try to work on the UI/UX for it.
- I think if allowing more time, it will work out super well. It’s not expensive to maintain a webpage, given that Github provides free domain. However, given the short period of time for the deliverable, probably we won’t have enough time to develop.
