Before making a systems game
Before making a systems game, I wasn’t entirely sure what that actually meant (I thought almost all games were systems games)—in fact, our first prototype of “Not on My Block!” was essentially more of a puzzle than a systems game: we had a simple mechanism with a loosely attached theme, and the theme wasn’t incorporated well into the actual mechanics. The prototype felt like an isolated set of rules rather than a system of interacting parts.
For example, our original mechanic—adding investment tokens to neighborhood hexagons to “protect” or “gentrify”—created very little interaction or competition between players and didn’t reflect the real dynamics of gentrification. It failed to represent key ideas like displacement of people and businesses into other areas, or the positive feedback loops that accelerate gentrification over time. After receiving feedback from our TA, we realized this and changed our core mechanic from investing in neighborhoods to physically pushing out apartments and gentrifying the board with new developments.
During the project
The most challenging parts of our project were: [1] Pivoting our entire game mechanism for Version 4, and [2] Making the game feel balanced.
As mentioned, our biggest pivot was switching from hexagon-based neighborhoods to square-based blocks and reframing the game from investment-based to displacement-based, where apartments are pushed out and replaced by luxury housing and stores. This was a significant risk because we made the decision relatively late in the process, knowing it would require extensive playtesting to rebalance.
Balancing the game itself was also difficult. After each playtest, we adjusted the number of Developer vs. Resident moves (eventually removing dice rolls and using fixed move counts) and refined the requirements for actions such as temporary apartment protection, permanent apartment protection, and converting local stores into luxury stores. Through multiple iterations, we were able to address issues like unfair player advantages and players relying on a single dominant strategy by tuning the cost-benefit tradeoffs between different strategic options.
What I would do next time
Next time, I would like to put more thought into the “local stores” in our game. We introduced the idea that the Developer could one-time activate local stores and convert them into luxury stores, allowing them to respawn from those blocks instead of always returning to Start. However, the game still feels slightly incomplete because there are only two local stores, and they’re placed randomly by us rather than by the players.
Even if we decide to keep just two fixed local stores, it would be valuable to experiment with their placement on the board to find locations that keep the game balanced—so that neither the Developer nor the Residents becomes too powerful, and the overall system of play remains fair and engaging.
Another opportunity is to make the game more high-fidelity (wood pieces, thicker board etc) that I may work on for P4.
