Final Reflection

I really enjoy a good board game. Having mechanics that reward different types of strategies each play through like Dominion come to mind. But games are more than strategy, they are community.

I came into this class expecting to have fun and make a board game – which I believed would be mostly having one good game idea and then refining it through iteration (I was wrong). I was entirely oblivious to the sheer amount of actual information, thought and science there was behind making a board game. This course taught me tons of it, from official mechanics like multilateral competition (1 v. group) to the proper techniques for incorporating onboarding (tutorials) into a game. I was especially struck by the different types of fun, I never considered that there were different ways to have fun, for example block blast is an incredibly different type of fun than Gloomhaven (submission v. challenge, discovery). I also learned that there should be a certain amount of balance between skill and randomness to allow less talented players a fair shot of winning PvP games. My first board game, Summit Rush, found this balance by randomly dealing out powerful cards to players. My second board game solved this issue by only having a single player. Through learning this information and making my own board game that you may start with what you believe is a great game concept, only to realize how bad the idea is after only the first play test. All of the concepts we learned about in this course could (and were) directly applied to creating our games, resulting in learning through doing  (much like is discussed in the onboarding sketch notes).

Throughout the course I not only experienced the challenges of actually designing and creating 2 (somewhat decent) board games, but also the challenges inherent with working in a team. Mechanics, visual design, onboarding, writing rules (what a headache) were all challenges right alongside communication and concept clashes with teammates. These challenges helped me not only grow as a player by being able to fully appreciate all of the work that goes into games (playing as a designer, not a player), but also as a person. Being a part of the team has helped me recognize the value of teamwork, task division and compromise.

This class was amazing. It wasn’t just fun to experience new genres of games through critical plays, but it was fun to be able to apply the experiences to a game of your own. This course has inspired me to spend more time exploring new games and game genres, and how to play them from a critical perspective. I will likely keep working on my games, more playtesting will reveal more flaws that I can fix to help my players have more fun. 

Thank you to the teaching staff for making this class so epic. (especially Nina)

(The featured image is from the onboarding video. I thought it was hilarious)

-Noah Leibert