For P1, Team Barracuda (my team) is thinking about creating “The Shrimp Game”, a free-for-all social deduction game with various types of sea creatures as roles. Vibes-wise it would be similar to a game like Goose Goose Duck (not Duck Duck Goose), Uno, and Feign; meaning a fun, playful game that encourages fellowship while also being mischievous with one another. Below are the questions I’d like to answer with our prototypes:
Question 1: What are the physical components that should go with our game?
This is an important question to answer as since our game is analogue, the actual physical pieces our players are interacting with will help determine how satisfying our game is as well as how complex it is. For example, we were thinking of having dice, card, and/or a board aspect to our game, but to make sure our game is quickly understood yet fun we’ll have to cut down to the minimum number of physical components as possible. Our prototype to solve this will likely be implementation-based (or correspond with our prototype that tests the system we want to use in general) where we’ll make some quick paper tests to see what components are actually relevant to our game. My prediction for what we’ll end up using is: dice, custom cards, and maybe some custom tokens, as a board may be too complex for our game and not be as conducive for a social deduction game.
Question 2: What is a simple, unique yet deep system that we can use to encourage a variety of different relationships in our game?
This is an especially important and possibly difficult question to answer because this is literally the core of our game, as we’re trying to make a simple yet fun experience where the complexity comes from the actual relationships you form with the other players as you continue, whether those be allyships or playful enemies. We’ll probably make multiple implementation prototypes (likely connected to the physical component prototypes as well), test them quickly in rounds with people to determine which one feels the most novel and fun to play. My guess is that we’ll probably be stuck on this for a while but maybe stick with a simple point-based bartering system.
Question 3: What’s a suitable art style for the game’s components and marketing materials, like the box?
This question is important because this in part determines our game’s tone but also the type of theoretical marketing we would do for it. Do we want a cute, simple and playful artstyle for the game? A hyperrealistic battle style? Or maybe something more weird than those. We’ll probably make some quick look and feel prototypes on paper before picking a direction that fits our tone and system the best. I predict that we’ll probably pick a more playful style as the shrimp game sounds pretty goofy.
Question 4: How do we balance the different roles so one isn’t more powerful than the others?
This is a question that I started to think about as I played the game Coup, mainly about how difficult it must’ve been to balance all the different roles. The roles overall felt pretty balanced, however, even after all the testing there were some roles that stood out more than others, which I feel will apply to our game as well as we try to balance the different sea creature roles. We’ll probably make prototypes later in the game development process where roles have slightly different abilities and see how powerful each feel, then adjust accordingly. My prediction for this question is that each role will have to have different win conditions according to their power level (less power –> easier win, more power –> harder win) to balance it out.
