ROCK-IT!
Team Members:
Elline Harrison, Elisabeth Holm, Jay Li, Kevin Nguyen
Artist’s Statement:
Rock-It! is a game for people who enjoy social deduction and resource allocation. Players take on one of three types of roles: the alien overlord, citizens, and rebels. The alien overlord narrates and facilitates the game to further immerse players. Citizens take from a communal bag of rocks, each aiming to have the largest hoard by the end of three rounds. Each citizen also has a unique role that allows them to shake the balance of the game. Rebels, however, play a more subtle game. Unable to directly collect rocks, rebels instead steal from citizens at night. Additionally, rebels have another path to victory. At the end of each round, the alien overlord reveals how many rocks remain in the communal asteroid. If it is empty, the rebels claim all the rocks for that round.
We designed Rock-It! to explore the tension between collective responsibility and individual goals, inspired by the idea of “tragedy of the commons.” Unity can easily collapse under the weight of self-interest. The objective of the game is designed to force citizens to weigh greed and personal gain against preserving the communal resource and preventing the rebels from winning. As the game unfolds, suspicion grows and alliances shift. Negotiations can spiral into hilarious accusations, bold demands and fun chaos.
Concept Map:
Initial Decisions about Formal Elements and Values:
At the start, we wanted to create a game that revolved around the tragedy of the commons. From this premise, we derived all of our initial elements. We wanted the primary aesthetic to be fellowship while also having a narrative to help draw players into our magic circle. Additionally, we wanted to appeal to sensation by having physical chits and chips to collect, as well as challenges in social deduction. We wanted to do this by encouraging bluffing and have our primary dynamic be mediating the allocation of finite resources. We began with a unilateral competition that included a contradictory mechanic where everyone could lose. The idea was to have players grapple with the tension between playing greedily in self-interest and preserving the collective. Thus, we came up with a game containing the following elements:
Objective and Players: It is a unilateral competition where players compete to have the most rocks by the end of the game.
Resources: There is a shared bag that players collect rocks (chits and chips) from. Each player also has a divider made from a folded piece of paper to obscure their total number of rocks.
Procedures: Players begin the game by discussing the distribution of rocks. Once an agreement is reached players pass around the bag of rocks and each take it from it. Each player may either take the amount they agreed to or secretly take more than their share. Players would also roll a dice to determine how many rocks they lose.
Outcomes: The winner of the game is determined by having the most rocks by the end of the game. However, if the shared pool of rocks was depleted before then, all players lose and the game ends prematurely.
Boundaries: Within the game, players would be encouraged to lie and bluff. Additionally, they could immerse themselves and roleplay as different characters in the game.
Testing and Iteration History:
Playtest 1 – Our group (3 players)
Big changes: We built the initial version with sequential resource taking, dice-based randomness to induce chaos, and open negotiation. After our first play, we thought of ideas like blockades, spinning for turn order, and adding consequences for greed.
What went well: The core idea already created tension. We were negotiating and trying to stop others from being greedy, which showed that the tragedy of the commons dynamic could work. The physical rocks also felt fun and engaging.
What didn’t go well: Roles did not matter at all, and players did not understand their motivations. The incentive to be greedy wasn’t high enough because you either lost by playing safe or lost by being too greedy, so it was better to just play it safe. Players also did not have enough information to make meaningful decisions, as there was no reveal of who was greedy in the previous round, so no information accumulated over time. This pushed us to focus on clearer incentives and more structured mechanics.
Playtest 2 – People from Kevin’s Dorm (4 players)
Big changes: We focused on clarifying core mechanics like how players commit to numbers, how per-round blocking should work, and randomizing turn order with a spinner. We mostly wanted to clarify the simplified game mechanics during this playtest.
What went well: Players explored different interesting strategies. For example, some players tried taking less to build trust, then taking more later. The random turn order helped distribute the advantage of going first as well.
What didn’t go well: Players quickly found ways of exploiting the game. For example, the first person to take could take all the rocks except 1 and everyone after them would have to take 0 in order not to kill the group. We realized that part of the tension of the tragedy of the commons is the lack of information on how much of the shared resource is left. This information is freely given when players go in sequential order and decide how many rocks to take in the moment, so we needed to hide that information before players made a decision. Bluffing existed, but there was still no strong risk versus reward tradeoff.
Playtest 3 – In Class (4 players)
Big changes: We removed sequential turns and switched to simultaneous decisions by having everyone write down their choice to better reflect the Tragedy of the Commons. We also introduced the first version of roles with unique abilities and individual win conditions.
What went well: Roles made the game much more engaging. Players had stronger opinions, argued more, and got into character. The simultaneous decision system also removed the advantage of going later and reduced information leakage.
What didn’t go well: Players felt confused by the number of different win conditions, since there could technically be multiple winners by the end. Some roles felt much more powerful than others and had easy exploits, so players in certain roles didn’t understand how to win. This showed us that roles were valuable, but we needed to simplify and align incentives better.
Playtest 4 – Class Game Night (5 players)
Big changes: To avoid the problems that came with individual win conditions in the previous playtest, we simplified roles into a team-based system with Rebels and Citizens. This made each players’ goals clearer and reduced confusion.
What went well: Players understood the structure more quickly since team goals were easier to grasp than individual win conditions.
What didn’t go well: The game became too predictable. Citizens realized they could just split resources evenly every round to avoid losing, which removed the tension that drove the game. This made the game feel boring as there was no reason to take risks or betray others. This made it clear that we needed stronger incentives for conflict and uncertainty.
Playtest 5 – In Class, Studio 4A (9 players)
Big changes: We added a Gamemaster (Alien Overlord) to manage hidden information and enforce rules. We kept teams but reintroduced unique roles and abilities to bring back asymmetry and motivate individual players to win.
What went well: Once the game got going, players were very engaged in discussion. This was especially clear in rounds two and three. They enjoyed the physical aspect of the game, both through the rocks and the bag. Players got into their roles more and understood the win conditions more clearly than before.
What didn’t go well: The rules became too complicated, and many players felt confused about details. Some players disengaged and checked their phones. The physical setup caused problems because players could hear rocks being taken, which revealed too much hidden information too early on in the game. The passing phase also felt slow and boring. This pushed us to make some changes to the passing phase in the next iteration.
Playtest 6 – People from Elline’s Dorm (9 players)
Big changes: We simplified the rules, removed unnecessary mechanics, and focused strongly on information design by revamping how the rules are presented. We also changed the passing phase by letting players talk and make space noises to hide the clinking of rocks and keep everyone engaged. This playtest was done with our Hi-Fi version, which players appreciated and felt made the game more engaging (see Hi-Fi asteroid bag below).
What went well: Two players immediately and independently understood that the game was about Tragedy of the Commons without any prompting or explanation. This was really exciting for us as it shows that we were able to bake the concept into the game without explicitly hitting players over the head with it. Players were extremely engaged throughout the whole game and played for longer than expected because of their lively debates and arguments. The social dynamics finally felt strong and consistent and there were many “AHA” moments of laughter and shouting.
What didn’t go well: The Gamemaster made a few mistakes with tracking where rocks were meant to go, which showed that we needed to provide the Gamemaster with more direct prompting to use a pen and paper where needed. The table setup also made it hard to fully hide information. Even with these issues, the game felt much more complete and fun.
Summary:
Across all six playtests, we kept identifying one core issue at a time and directly responding to it in the next version. We started with large overcorrections to ensure we weren’t getting locked in to one problematic mechanic. As we tried out various mechanics, it became clear which ones worked and which didn’t, so we were able to fine tune more delicately toward the end of the process. Overall, we started with unclear goals and no incentives, added roles to create motivation, simplified into teams to reduce confusion, then reintroduced complexity carefully with a Gamemaster and abilities. Finally, we stripped away unnecessary mechanics and focused on clarity and social interaction.
Final Playtest Video:
Link: https://youtu.be/GJTYttj35WQ
High-fidelity version:
While the print-and-play version of the game is intended to include all necessary parts so that any player is able to recreate the game experience at home, the high-fidelity shelf-ready version of our prototype is one that particularly adds to the experience. By adding real rocks, a hand-made asteroid bag, plastic tokens, and a hardshell outer box, the feel of the game is very satisfying and fun to interact with. A lot of the sensory fun comes through just by playing with the rocks! Overall, the design of the materials are also aimed to be accessible towards those with color-blindness, using colors that are distinctive across a variety of color-visibility abilities.
Final Print-and-play:
