P1: Casino Coin Clash

Game: Casino Coin Clash

Game Designers: Tenzin Dolkar, Manas Khadka, Kendal Murray, Brendan Reeves

Artist’s statement

Drawing inspiration from our favorite social deduction games like Coup, Mafia, and One Night Ultimate Werewolf, we wanted to craft a unique experience that tests not only strategic thinking but also the ability to navigate and manipulate social dynamics.

Our game, Casino Coin Clash, invites players into a high-stakes casino atmosphere where every move is a gamble not just of coins, but of trust. With roles such as the Hoarder and Splurger, each player is assigned a distinct objective, however it is up to them to decide whether to try to reach that individual goal themselves or try to deduce who may be on their team and help them win instead. The addition of the Casino Profiler and the Pit Boss introduces layers of complexity, because players must deduce others’ identities while concealing their own while worrying about alternate win conditions of these two roles.

Casino Coin Clash is designed to be a dynamic social experience that encourages players to form alliances, betray trust, and engage in deception to achieve victory. The team-based element enhances this interplay, requiring players to determine not only who they can outwit, but also who they can rely on. This game is not just about how well you can play your cards or coins, but how skillfully you can read others—a true blend of strategy, psychology, and risk.

Concept Map:

concept_map

Formal Elements:

We were initially inspired by the Mafia and Catan style of game that incorporated strategy, team effort and deception to inspire adventurous and exciting games for players to connect with others. The theme was initially set to be characters from the Wild Wild West such as the Townsperson and Bank Robber, however we later modded it to a casino theme that best captured the dynamic of a “splurger” and “hoarder”.

Players:

We initially started with 4 players, but craving more social interaction, increased it to 6 so there was an even split of 3 Hoarders and 3 Splurges to balance out both sides of the tug and pull game. However, to add more fun and intricacy to the game, we later added two new characters, the Pit Boss and Casino Profiler to act as the stabilizer of the game (make sure neither side wins) and to guess and profile each character’s role respectively.

Values:

As mentioned before, we were inspired by our favorite strategic and social deduction game, so we wanted to make sure we valued strategic thinking, deception, and social interaction. We wanted players to think about their actions ahead of time and, based on the decisions of other players, have to adapt to give themselves/their team the best shot of winning. We also wanted to really focus on the social deduction element, so that meant adjusting our game by adding two new players and adding a limit to the round to really provide incentives for communication and interaction. And when it comes to deception, we wanted to make sure that the game put some value in the ability to lie/bluff, which also proves useful in a traditional casino environment. This also makes Casino Coin Clash a game of challenge, having to use strategy to carefully manage your resources, deduce others’ roles, and navigate your own path to victory and a game of fellowship as the game heavily relies on social interaction to succeed, despite the character card you receive.

Testing and iteration history

We ended up playtesting around 4 times, and each time provided many valuable insights that we used to strongly iterate on our game.

1st Playtest:

Our very first playtest, we played among ourselves as a group of 4. We were inspired by the ‘Wild Wild West’ theme and had two roles, the ‘Robber’ and the ‘Townsperson’. The Townsperson objective was to get to 10 coins and the ‘Robber’s goal was to get to 0 coins. The game started where you shuffle the character cards and pass one out to each person, that’s their role with their individual goal, since everyone played for themselves.

What we learned from this playtest:

Playing with only 4 people wasn’t very fun. We noticed that game play was very quick and there wasn’t much surprise as to the action because it was easy to keep track of every player’s actions.
There was no social element because there was no incentive to talk. Despite each player having a character, and some players having the same character, because everyone had an individual goal, it served them no good to try to communicate what their end goal was. Because of this, game play was silent which goes against our whole goal for this game, of including social deduction.
The win conditions of ‘Robber’ and ‘Townsperson’ were not very intuitive, because neither a Robber or Townsperson in the real world would willingly try to lose all their money, so at times we would get confused during game play and would need to keep referring to our cards.

2nd Playtest:

Changes based on the feedback from the previous playtest:

We went on to play with 6 people to see if there was more collaboration that took place considering there were more players.
We included a team-based element where the outcome of the game was decided by whichever team achieves majority victories. For example, if you are playing with 6 players, once you achieved your goal you got one win for your team, and game continues until all members of one team won
We changed the character roles from Robber -> Splurger and Townsperson -> Hoarder.

What we learned from this playtest:

The names of character roles were a lot more intuitive, as the word Hoarder is someone who tries to store things, and splurger is someone who tries to get rid of things, so the names of the characters were a lot more intuitive during gameplay.
Despite playing with 6 people, the game still felt way too simple which made all the players feel like the game was pointless due to it being too easy to end the game
While we hoped players would work together since the outcome of the game was decided by whichever team achieves majority victories, this wasn’t actually the case because there were too few mechanics. Because of this, playtesters still weren’t interacting with each other and selfishly focusing on their goals
We also notices the players who would get out early were very bored since they had nothing to do

3rd playtest:

Changes based on the feedback from the previous playtest:

In order to allow it so all players stay in the game, but stay within the team-based win conditions, we changed the win condition to one player needs to win for the entire team to win.
In order to increase the complexity of the game, we added new action cards that allow for more complex coin movement and player interactions

What we learned from this playtest:

Changing to the new team-based win conditions fixed the problem of players getting out and having nothing to do, however we noticed that there still was not much collaboration. We do however think this had to do with the lack of time given for gameplay and players were still figuring out the game and had not figured out how to best interact with each other or what all of the cards we made did
While the old cards only allowed for money to be moved, these cards allowed for more diverse ways to move money, ways to prevent money from being moved, as well as making cards a more valuable resource. However we did not have enough time for players to learn about all the cards, so couldn’t see which cards were most effective at helping players accomplish their goals.
Because players were starting with 5 coins, and the goal was to reach either 0 or 10, gameplay ended very quickly and this is something that the playtesters complained about. It was so quick that there was no time to really adhere to any strategy.

Final Playtest:

Changes based on the feedback from the previous playtest:

Because gameplay ended too quickly with starting with 5 coins, we changed the game so everyone starts with 10 coins, and the goal for splurgers is still to get to 0, but hoarders now want to get to 20 coins
We added two new roles: Pit Boss and Casino Profiler
- The Casino Profiler plays for themselves, but their whole goal is to correctly guess each player’s character card. We raise the stakes so they only get one guess, if they are wrong they are out of the game, but if they are right, the game ends.
- The Pit Boss goal is to elongate the game as long as possible, by making sure that if no one wins by the 10th round, they win.
We included new action cards that allowed players to switch their character cards with another player. This card existed to allow for more strategic choices for player-to-player interaction which would hopefully lead to more exciting interactions between players
We also played with 8 players so there were 3 splurgers, 3 hoarders, 1 pit boss, and 1 profiler
Because we wanted a comprehensive theme, we also changed from a general ‘hoarders vs splurgers’ theme, to a casino theme. This was a lot more fun, a lot more appropriate based on the gameplay, and the names of character cards were still intuitive to the goals/objectives.

What we learned from this playtest:

With the Casino Profiler character, we noticed people were careful to not reveal their character card right away, and were actually trying to be deceptive and tip the profiler off
With the Pit Boss we noticed as the game got closer and closer to the end, players felt the need to start talking and collaborating more to make sure that their team.
It was hard for players to keep track of the number of coins they had as they needed to keep counting,especially when they had 10+ coins. It was also hard for players to keep track of what round they were on and often had to ask “wait, what round is this?”.
The new action cards, specifically the swap character cards, ended up being used more so to inspect another player’s role than to change their own, where they were able to use that card and switch with someone who they believed was on their team, so the two players knew they could work with each other.
The most important piece of feedback we received was that the players all had fun! The Profiler had lied and claimed they were a hoarder to gain the trust of the hoarder next to them and they tried to work together to figure out who was on who’s team. So come to the actual hoarder’s dismay when the profiler revealed themselves! These were the type of interactions that we were hoping to have, so we were very pleased with the outcome.

The final changes we made to the product after final playtest:

Incorporated a 5-value coin that players can swap out five 1-value coins so it’s easier to keep track.
Incorporated a round tracker that the starting player is responsible for moving at the start of their turn.
Because 10 rounds is not a lot, based on feedback we also allowed players to start with three action cards as opposed to two, so not everyone is wasting their first round grabbing a new card.

Link To Final Playtest: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hQ0hrg1OtJpntB601tenaXyV1J6yHPvo/view?usp=sharing

Figma: https://www.figma.com/file/kb6fP41BajjOu4HlQ7nRPr/CS247G-P1-Style-and-Marketing?type=design&node-id=0%3A1&mode=design&t=G9DcU6S1N6NuBvl3-1

Rules: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1m6wh8Gw1UTe3UrBJJFVK5yzoonfrCAnM_uqMs8JNqdQ/edit?usp=sharing

Print N Play: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aQ-YVxjmy7RJPNMIMDhxMTvd6IKHoHwQ/view?usp=drive_link

Justification of Designs

In designing our game, we chose to center our theming around two colors, since a big part of the game’s identity is the conflict between the two teams (Splurgers and Hoarders). We went for a minimalistic design, since through this game we wanted to bring “the casino to your home” while keeping things family friendly and not too hyper-realistic. While we considered going for a more professional casino aesthetic, we stuck to fun colors (pink and navy blue) to better highlight the hectic social aspect of the game instead of the strategic aspect of the game (a more traditional casino black and red, for example). This design choice was also made with the hope of better appealing to kids who are not quite as familiar or drawn in by the more adult theme of “casino”, since we want to draw in players ages 8+.

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