Our group currently has two ideas, a Mafia style game w/ in between minigames, as well as a mafia-clue hybrid style game. For the sake of this assignment, I’ll focus on the Mafia style game w/ minigames.
Question 1: Which elements are fun and what elements are not fun?
- This is especially important as we have to design several minigames, and we will need to be able to quickly find out which ones are engaging and which ones aren’t.
- Because the minigames will be designed to be quite simple, prototyping should be quite quick… we should be able to use pen and paper for most of these as well as no materials for other ones
- Some minigames will likely be duds and other ones will be hits, I imagine some of the first ideas we have will be better than some of the later ideas we have. Though I could totally be wrong on this.
Question 2: What elements will our game actually require?
- For both of our ideas, we aren’t entirely sure yet what physical elements we will actually need to build the game. This is essential so we are not confused and our playtesters are not confused.
- For this, we will likely need to try various different prototypes to see which one sticks the best. As of now, we know that it will specifically be an analog prototype, so no one should need any sort of electronic devices during the game.
- I think we ultimately are going to need playing cards, and a pen and paper for each active member of the game. Though maybe we wouldn’t even need paper and could just use sticky notes, as the game from Thursday where we made doodle monsters illustrated that.
Question 3: How will this be implemented with the least amount of friction for our group / implemented efficiently?
- This is important so we can do rapid prototyping / it doesn’t take days to create a new prototype if one “fails”.
- I think the absolute easiest possible prototype for easiest implementation is to have the required playing cards (I have several decks of playing cards) and a set of about 3-4 minigames that do not require any materials whatsoever.
- My guess is that we will likely have to make the game a bit more complicated than the proposed above prototype, but this prototype would at least be easy to iterate on and improve.
