- How much player – player interactivity should there be?
- With the dog show dress-up aspect, we need to ensure that the game maintains the social mediation central theme. If our game doesn’t have enough player – player interactivity, we risk losing the fellowship fun.
- We may want to use a Sushi-Go type movement of cards, where each hand of cards gets passed around and each player attempts to collect items that fit in a certain category. We might instead want an Old Maid type movement of cards, where each player has 1/n of the total cards where n is number of players, and players ‘steal’ cards from one another. Making physical, playable card prototypes will help us decide on which movement mechanic to use.
- I’m guessing that the Old Maid type of movement will prompt more negotiation, bluffing, and overall social interaction, so we will choose that movement.
- Should there be base characters with roles and/or special powers?
- I have an idea of a ‘base dog’ that each player begins with. I’m unsure if each player should get the same exact base dog, or if there should be a variety. Having various characters may help the strategy of the game, as if the Poodle has extra Beauty points and the Australian Shepard has extra Tricks points, it may guide the course of the game and the players’ choices. However, even without special abilities, the expression of favorites/preference may add to the expression of creativity and that kind of fun.
- We can make prototypes of the base characters, special ability characters, and base characters only with different aesthetics and see how they affect gameplay and the types of fun we experience.
- I predict that although special ability characters might increase the strategy and challenge fun experienced, they might also overcomplicate the game. I predict aesthetic-only differences in the base dogs will be our final choice.
- What prompts should we include as the second part of the game?
- After the initial dog-dressup part of the game, the dogs enter a competition phase against one another based on randomly-drawn prompts. Then it becomes a judging game, hopefully with silly and/or wacky prompts that might either be judged based on a points system or on arbitrarily assigned values. Understanding the types of prompts and the judging mechanic is very important as the second part of the game must feel intrinsically and seamlessly connected to the first part. The types of prompts will also affect the target audience — if made too simple, it targets a younger audience. If made too explicit, we risk not targeting anyone at all (both being about cute dogs and disgusting things may not appeal to either the young or the old).
- We can make prompt prototypes with simple, funny, challenging, and explicit themes and test to see the emotions elicited by each set. We can also use different judging systems (points vs. arbitrary) on each set.
- I guess that we will lean towards silly and funny prompts that are judged on an arbitrary value system. Maybe a future expansion set could be targeted towards a more mature audience.
