In the past two weeks, I’m surprised to have made such a high-fidelity game, Heartland, with two of the most amazing fellow game designers in the world (Ngoc and Sebastian). Although it took countless nights of rule revamps and printing/cutting out cards at the d.school during “Butch’s working hours” (12 AM to 5 AM), it seemed as if these late-night creative sessions were where our best ideas emerged.
Figure 1: Image of students in CS377G playing Heartland
The strongest types of fun were Fantasy and Fellowship. Towards the latter changes of our game, we iterated towards increasing player agency and player-to-player interaction (ex: adding Challenge Cards and more targeted Resource Cards). In our game, players didn’t just choose and manage crops, but also embodied rival farmers navigating complex agricultural dynamics. (My favorite part was when one of the playtesters roleplayed as an almond farmer and watched their tree burn from a wildfire.) These mechanics created dynamics where players could figure out relationships between neighboring plots, creating natural social tension and collaboration. This type of strategy was exactly what we aimed for, and it’s great to see us meet this goal.
Figure 2: Ngoc working hard at the d.school to make the Heartland box
In terms of educational impact, it was surprising to witness the hard data from pre-test and post-test scores. Although players claimed that they did not learn much, we noticed they would actively recognize cards from the pre-test, and commit it to memory for the post-test. For example, during our final in-class playtest, Julia would casually mention noticing the “Bill of Lading” or “Red Flag Warning” from the pre-test, committing these concepts to memory through gameplay rather than explicit instruction. This stealth learning felt powerful (and meaningful to me as a designer) than any traditional educational approach. As a tangentially-related aside, the games that I played before this assignment (the Epipen game and Wildfire game) seemed very obviously educational, but lacked an aspect of fun. I’m glad we were able to create a better balance of something fun and covertly educational.
Figure 3: The wildfire game that I played prior to developing Heartland (it was very mediocre)
The biggest thing I learned from this process is how important onboarding is for teaching games. One quote that stuck with me was: “If players are busy thinking about the rules and where they can play stuff, then they won’t actually think about strategy.” Our last few iterations thus focused heavily on cognitive offloading, making the game mechanics intuitive so players could engage with the educational content and strategic thinking rather than wrestling with confusing rules. Because of this, I’m extremely happy with our final result where people could set up the game without requiring help, placing everything in the right spots and figuring out the mechanics from the rulebook.
I used to be skeptical of “educational” games that often prioritized learning over player enjoyment. But Heartland showed me that achieving both is possible. As an enjoyer of both game design and education, I aim to continue exploring this intersection outside of class. Big shout-out to the teaching team, playtesters, and my team members for all of the support!
