Week 10: Game Balance, Asymmetry, and Battle Battle

We finally divided into groups to design a Battle-Battle game with three players vs. one opponent without violence. My group decided to settle on the theme of Waffle House. We wanted our game to be humorous but also enjoyable for the players. To set the scene: It's 3 AM, and no other restaurant is open besides Waffle House. A range of guests arrive at WH and are starving. Their goal is to eat as much or as much of the food at WH. Our opponent, the Waffle House employee,  is the only person working a shift at WH. They want to have a successful business without losing all their inventory.  The employee must stop the guests from eating all the food. The guests include a Flordia Man, a Drunkard, Shaquille O'Neal, a Karen, and our professor, Dr. S. These players are deranged and insane, so they collaborate to take over the Waffle House and eat all the food. When planning out what each character's Health Points, Tokens, and what each face of the die represents during their role, we wanted to make sure that it was easy to understand and balance. In Chapter 11 of Players Making Decisions, Hiwiller says, "Games with high randomness are usually suited for children with cognitive abilities that make a game with actual decision-making too taxing." It is essential to ensure the game is balanced so that the players can be challenged and feel rewarded when they win. In Chapter 7 of Games, Design, and Play: A Detailed Approach to Iterative Game Design, when developing a game design document, there are a few essential things to include, "Description of play experience: This is a paragraph that describes the basic elements and premise in language that would make sense to someone unfamiliar with the game. " When compiling our instructions, we want it to be easily understood by various individuals.  We have much more to think about for this project on the technical side, but I'm excited to see how our game plays out. From our test-playing in class within my team, it has worked very well and is super entertaining. Hopefully, we can work out these instructions, and it will be a solid game.