The game “Roommate Beef” is designed to afford fellowship and challenge by implementing different mechanics. To make the game challenging, we designed the game to be a survival game, in which the players would try to survive 5 days (rounds) in the game. We added to the challenge by providing personalities to the players, with which they need to abide, and global events that bring damage to the space. Both mechanics provide restraints to where and how the players can keep their rooms and shared space clean, while certain cards do lift the burden on the players a little bit, such as being bald and not needing to clean the shower. Fellowship was encouraged in the game through certain mechanics, such as no tool sharing. Specifically, the players need to communicate about their cleaning needs and negotiate who gets which tool, since the same cleaning tool can only be used by one player. Additionally, the players share a living space, so while keeping their rooms clean, which most players can do without any difficulty, the players need to negotiate about who’s cleaning the shared space while one cleans his or her room.
By implementing these mechanics, this game makes survival without any communication extremely hard, which encourages the players to communicate at a high rate. This communication, in turn, builds a comradeship between the players, as they fight the challenge of survival together. The different personalities and events, while adding difficulty to their survival, would show the players how their actions, such as partying, can negatively impact the living space, even if they don’t intend it to be. Hence, these memorable events help the players to be more aware of the consequences of their actions.
This game offers me my first experience in designing a physical object for people to learn with. It is a very fascinating experience, and I realized that designing is not that different from teaching a lesson, through which I’m also designing for a chain of activities and hoping the audience learns something from them. However, designing a game seems harder than “designing” a class: during the class, I can always step in and alter the course a little bit, so that the class is engaging and meaningful. However, while the players are playing the game I design, I cannot step in at such a frequency. I need to let the players interact with each other. It is hard for me to predict what moves the players may take, and every player comes with such different gaming backgrounds that they may very well be thinking outside my box. This difference seems to be an interesting challenge for me, and I would like more experience in game design to overcome this challenge.
