Day 3

Today in class we made really good progress with our game. Over the weekend we met up and started getting pieces together and created a rough draft of the board. Just having a couple pieces and a board to look at and visualize a real game made it a lot easier. Even though we still haven’t figured out exactly how we want our board game to look; we came up with a basic layout. Our game board will have four different campuses, Busch, Livingston, College Ave, and Cook Douglass with High Point Solutions Stadium in the middle. There will be a connecting bridge between two campuses, so players have to move around the board and from campus to campus in a clockwise motion. We believed that it was more important to figure out the rules and mechanics of the game above all else and that we could save the esthetic parts of the game for another day.
Coming up with rules for this game was not easy. We were trying to overcome the monotonous, roll a dice and move that many spaces, so we incorporated several choices the player can decide between. In RU Screwed, the way to win the game is be the first one to graduate Rutgers University.  During our group discussion, we figured out that it would make the game more fun if this end result could be achieved several different ways so players could employ different strategies. We settled on three different options, make your way around the map and to the stadium, collect 120 credits or complete your choice of major. This allows players to make a choice and decide which way will help them win the game first. We also made rolling the dice into a strategy. When the player rolls the dice, he/she can decide between moving either forwards or backwards that many spaces, not move at all and take that number roll and at that to your credit total or to not move and cut that number roll in half and subtract that number from a players credit count. Our group wanted to make the game more strategy based and I believe that with these two characteristics added to our game, that we have achieved that goal. Next week we will try to come up with more rules to make RU Screwed even more entertaining and to start working on the final layout of how we want the board to look.

Making the Game From the Ground Up

At our first meeting during class, we had a good amount of time to talk about our game, "RU SCREWED?" We talked about a lot of the game mechanics. 

Our first challenge was how to incorporate dice into our game without having it act as it would normally would in any board game. We talked about using a dice that had shaped and colors on it rather than numbers, but realized that it would not work with our game. After a lot of ideas and collaboration, we decided that the number rolled on the dice would either be for earning that amount of credits or taking the amount rolled away from another player. This way, the player who rolled the dice would be able to make a decision to either go ahead in the game or slow down other players who may be leading. 

Another challenge that we had to overcome was how to have the board game set up, that it wouldn't be a typical going around the board in a counter-clockwise or clockwise manner. At this point, we only added diagonals to the board game but left it that you may go either clockwise or counter-clockwise.

For our next class we divided up all the aspects of the game design between all the members. Joe was assigned to make the cards for the game. Greg was assigned to find some kind counting system for us to record the amount of credits. Pete was assigned to design the cards and board, and Ruchi was assigned to make the board game itself.

So far the game is coming out pretty good, and only a trial run in class with all the materials will show us what progress we need to make a perfect game.