Blog Week 4

As we started out class on Wednesday we were not sure if the game we designed was going to be a success or not. Reason being that we were not very clear on how to actually play the game successfully so that it makes it a fun experience for the players. Even though we all had the basic outlook of what the game objective is, it was pretty confusing to get started. That’s when everything changed, as we progressed in the game and made some minor modification the game actually seemed fun. The first round that we played it took us awhile to get the hang of it, and we started to solve the problems that the game might have.

The first game gave us a overlook of how the game is played and what can make it more interesting. It also showed us how long does it take to play one full game. The game takes somewhere between 15 to 30 minutes, which is a kind of game that people play when they are waiting for food. Other few minor details that we thought to change were like how many cards does a player starts with. We all decided upon 5 cards at the beginning of the game and 2 cards when the player runs out of cards in his hand. We also changed the number of cards a person can draw from the refrigerator, for example: the main dish card will get you a main dish or 3 cards from the refrigerator, and other cards will get you two cards from the refrigerator or a card from their own category. So now we had fixed the trading problem and the number of cards in the hand of a player.

After the end of the second round, our group saw a problem towards the end of the game. As to end the game you must make a complete meal but than other people can sabotage the meal to stop you from winning. Our observation was that once the meal is complete other players kept destroying the meal of the player and the game kind of got dragged on. So our solution was to do some thing called a locked meal, which means once someone gets their whole meal complete other people cannot sabotage that player’s meal as it is locked down. With this modification we played our 3^rd game and it turns out that we had just created an awesome game.

Overall the class session was a really good productive session as it was more of a time for our group to reflect upon the issues in the game and come up with a solution for them. I think by end of this week we are in a good shape, because we basically have our cards layout and the layout for the game leaving us with just making the cards. I look forward to playing the game again this Wednesday and show others how it is played too. Also we are thinking of changing the name of the game from “Epic Meal” to “Kitchen Chaos.”

HARRY (HARSHIT) BHATT.