Proudly brought to you by Ethan, Ana, and Janelle!

Artist Statement

Our game, Inkling, was designed with creativity, problem solving, and teamwork in mind. It is a game that can be picked up at any party, between strangers or friends. The simple idea of guiding an unknowing artist, combined with carefully balanced limitations, always results in a challenging, laughter-filled game where every player contributes to the outcome. We have put much consideration into the mechanics in order to create a game where each player has to work together in order to succeed. Throughout a game of Inkling, players are putting their trust in one another to guide them in the right direction, fostering fellowship, one of our core values. 

Additionally, Inkling is designed to be a challenging game, where moments of victory are celebrated, and moments of failure are laughed about. While there is a competitive element throughout the game, the main intentions for Inkling are relationship growth, laughter, and fun. Strangers will get to know each other, and friends will strengthen their relationships. All players of Inkling will share moments of victory, failure, laughter throughout the game. 

Initial Decisions

1. Players: Initially, we organized our 6+ players in a Team v. Team arrangement to foster healthy competition while also giving each player the opportunity for fellowship amongst their own team. We also considered Player v. Game, but decided to move forward with Team v. Team for the more competitive feel (but still playtested Player v. Game to confirm our hypothesis). We started with 6+ players so that each team would have at least 3 players, but did not set an upper limit, since we believed our game would work with any reasonable number of players.
2. Objectives: Inkling’s initial objective was a race to 10 points. Points would be given to a team if they successfully guided their artist to draw and guess the word they pulled from the Prompt deck of cards.
3. Outcomes: Initially, the outcome of Inkling was chosen to be zero-sum. The first team to 10 points would win, while the other team would then lose. Since we also discussed a Player v. Game arrangement, we were also considering a non zero-sum outcome where every player would work together to try and get the highest score. However, we did not settle on this in our initial decisions (but we did playtest for this).
4. Procedures: Our initial rules planning doc is at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VdtyFVsmNW7mbTY7LMlEV6sVllIjfuD2/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=117909749236336689329&rtpof=true&sd=true. Our initial rules were as follows:
   1. Each team selects an artist for their team. For each round, the team will select a new team member to be an artist.
   2. Teams will take turns having their artist draw – for example, Team A will be drawing and instructing while Team B observes. Then the next turn they will swap active/passive roles. A round concludes after both A and B have finished taking turns.
   3. During each round:
      1. Each team selects a card difficulty from either easy, medium, or hard at the start of their turn. The Artist is NOT allowed to see the selected card. Easy cards are worth 1 point if guessed correctly, medium cards are worth 2 points, and hard cards are worth 4 points.
      2. Then, the team will draw raw shape cards that the artist is restricted to using for that round, and display them face up on the table. The below table describes how many raw shape cards they may select depending on the difficulty of the word card they just selected.

Difficulty	easy	medium	hard
Cards drawn	3	4	5

1. The team members, except for the artist, have 60 seconds to plan how they want to instruct the artist. They may use a sketchpad to come up with a sample drawing to guide their instructions.
2. Team members, except for the artist, take turns giving a single instruction for how the artist should add to the drawing. After each team member gives an instruction, they may go through again in the same order as many times as they wish before the turn ends.
   1. Only the team member whose turn it is may speak
   2. Instructions must only reference the shapes available to them from the shape cards drawn, as well as any distances/dimensions and directions they deem necessary. (For example, an instruction could be “draw a circle with a 5 inch diameter in the top left corner”, which could be followed by “now draw a triangle below the circle, 3 inches tall”)
   3. After each instruction, the artist may make 1 guess as to what the word is. Instructions must result in a shape being drawn (e.g. can’t say pass, skip, erase, etc.)
   4. The turn ends after the artist successfully guesses the word, or after 5 minutes if they are unable to guess.
3. If the artist guesses correctly within the 5 minute time limit, their team gets the appropriate number of points according to the difficulty level, and they may draw 1 Sabotage card from the sabotage deck to be used in future rounds while the opposing team is drawing.
4. While one team is drawing, the other team may use a Sabotage card at any time on the artist. The effects last for the remainder of that artist’s turn.
5. If the drawing team does not correctly guess the word, then the opposing team has one chance to guess the word to  “steal” it for 1 point.

1. The game ends when one team has reached 10 points, and that team wins.

1. Boundaries: The initial boundaries of Inkling existed around the players, and in the time frame of the game, estimated to be around 45 minutes. There were no explicit spatial boundaries, however, the game is best played when each team can easily see and hear one another.
2. Values: Our initial values for Inkling, and the values that stayed important to Inkling throughout our iterations, were predominantly Fellowship and Challenge. Secondarily, our values are Expression and Discovery.

 

Playtesting and Iterations

In addition to solo playtesting to establish our initial rules, we went through three additional rounds of prototype creation and playtesting to test our hypotheses about Inkling and improve the game. Below are our findings and revisions from these rounds:

Iteration 1 – Solo playtest, with 3 team-members:

Guiding questions: Will it be possible to guide the artist effectively with only basic instructions? How long will it take to guide the artist? How should we set up our initial formalized rules?

What worked:

• The concept of guiding an unknowing artist was very effective in creating fellowship and inciting laughter.
• Basic shapes were sufficient in describing the objects we were drawing.
• The basic gameplay was fun!

What didn’t work:

• An incorrectly drawn shape or element would often throw the whole picture off for the artist, so we had to introduce erasing.
• Instructors had a hard time coordinating instructions without being able to speak to one another, so we needed to introduce a brief discussion period at the beginning.

Revisions:

• Set time limit to 5 minutes per round
• Introduced a 1 minute discussion period between instructors at beginning of each round
• Allowed artists to erase parts of the drawing
• Set up point system of 1 point for easy words, 2 for medium words, and 4 for hard words
• Formalized what shapes could be referenced in each instruction

Iteration 2 – In-class, with 4 players:

Guiding questions: Is each round too long? Does everyone feel like they are contributing? Is the game too similar to Pictionary or other existing games?

What worked:

• 4 players to a team was a good size, but players did not want any bigger of a team
• Game did not feel too similar to existing game due to flipped mechanic where instructors gave artist instructions and the artist has to guess the word
• Every player (instructors and artist) felt like they significantly impacted the outcome of the game

What didn’t work:

• 5 minutes per round left a lot of dead time. The drawing was done after 2-3 minutes and players didn’t know what to do for the remaining time.
• Instructors were discussing with each other outside of discussion time, and reported that they thought that we shouldn’t allow that (They did not realize it was against the rules)
• When players were stuck, the game came to a standstill.

Revisions:

• Reduce time per round to 3 minutes
• Emphasize in the rules that talking outside of the discussion period is against the rules
• Introduce mechanic where a team can sacrifice a point and allow instructors to each draw a shape on the picture to help the artist guess (to help resolve standstills)
• Change the winning outcome to be the team with the most points instead of the first team to 10 points (allows every player to be the artist once).

 

Iteration 3 – In-class, with 6 players:

Guiding questions: How should we set up the Team v. Team dynamic: simultaneously or one team at a time? Are the sabotage cards challenging but fair?

What worked:

• The level of challenge in the game was well scaled for the most part
• Sabotage cards was a fun way to challenge the other team further and introduce some inter-team action

What didn’t work:

• Both teams playing simultaneously was too chaotic and felt like disjointed games
• Teams shouldn’t have to pick the same difficulty, which added confusion when games were occurring simultaneously
• Ran out of shape cards when teams played simultaneously

Revisions:

• Teams should go one at a time!
• Make rules about sabotage cards more clear
• Allow each team to pick their own difficulty prompt word

Iteration 4 – In-class, with 8 players:

Guiding questions: Is our rulebook clear and easy to understand? Is the game boring for the players on the team that is not actively drawing? Does our premise/theme make sense?

What worked:

• Players were very engaged throughout the game, even when the other team was drawing
• Each player felt like they were actively contributing to the game.

What didn’t work:

• Players found the rulebook to not address all of their questions
• What is allowed for each shape card was not clear to some players
• Players did not notice the scoresheet on the table
• Players found the hard difficulty words to be imbalanced
• Sketch artists had no indication of whether their guesses were close or not. This often led to stalemates or aimless guessing and frustration.

Revisions:

• Formalize what counts / is valid for each shape card in the rulebook
• Added a “hot” and “cold” indicator for witnesses to guide the artist
• Clarify what types of discussions were allowed within the team
• Refine our premise to make it match the game more appropriately
• Make our scoresheets larger and more aesthetically pleasing
• Rebalance word difficulties

Design Mockup Figma: 

https://www.figma.com/file/rhuPgR4iw0ArwM96v6FWKb/Inkling?type=design&node-id=0%3A1&mode=design&t=BVmlOY6SgHdtTZmu-1

Final Playtest Video

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HgEX76Zz2PusDPdRTDUynhWv1Fq6wdyz/view?usp=sharing

Final Prototype

Rules: Rules final

Print-to-Play (includes front & back of box): Inkling (2)