New Project - Apple Interactive Project

This week we started our new project, we must each research, conceptualize and design a game/interactive 'App' for an Apple Platform. Im excited about starting this project, but with so many different ideas and possibilities its been difficult to know where to start.

Research

Before making any decisions in what type of game I want to make, I first visited the Apple Store in the local Mall to look at some of the products, like the iphone and ipad, and play some of the "Apps".

Iphone as a Product: Functions and Design

Sensitive touch screen, light in weight/easy to handle, and reacts to how it is being handled/screen flips depending on angle.
When designing my game, I want to take these functions into consideration.

Angry Birds

This was the first game I played, I selected it from the iphone menu becuase I had heard the name a lot from this project. I played this game simply because I didnt need to read any instructions, which i found to be very important, as i then ignored other games that required me to read anything other than "play". The game play is simple, you fire birds from a slingshot (you control the strength and angle) towards towers and buildings of glass, wood and metal, to attack the green pigs hiding below. I enjoyed playing the game and it took me a while to stop playing, and I later found out that it is infact the top grossing "App" on the iphone. I think it has done so well becuase of these factors:

• Simple play - 
• Its not as easy as it looks - Its a puzzle game, you need to think about where to attack first and whether it will be a help or a hinderance in your next move. This also means its not as repetative as you would think because each level requires you to think differently.
• Short Levels - As addictive as it is, you can play it for as long or as short as you like, so its a perfect pass time if you only have 10 minutes to spare or a whole day. 

Other games: Orsinal.com

Lots of simple games, many one level, easy to waste a few minutes here and there.

Soundwave

 This is our final board for out board game created by Reese.

This is the Box design for our game, created by Phil

Our Board Game

As a group we decided our game needs to:

• Be simple and easy to play, but not mindless and boring.
• Have a lot of interaction - fast paced
• build pressure and anticipation as you play (random timer)

These were the initial ideas we came up with for our boardgame while researching other boardgames:

Initial Idea

• Game like Pass the Bomb where you have a timer to pass around and have to sing/hum the song or theme that is on your card.

Inspiration

• "Pass the Bomb" no board, just cards and timer to hold on to
• "Intros Round" from Never Mind The Buzzcocks a music based quiz show, where contestants have to sing the start of a song for their team mate to guess.
• Party Games - Play in Groups and involves Trivia

Things we could do to expand this game idea:

• Film theme tunes and songs (such as James Bond)
• Game theme tunes (such as Super Mario theme)
• Themes from television programmes/cartoons
• Music in General, look at different genres

What our Game will consist of:

• Cards - Showing song titles of themes
• Timer - Some sort of timer that will go off at random

Possible Titles for our Game

• Song Master
• Theme Quest

Time Line:

Week One

• Mon 27th Sept - Given Our Brief for this Board game project, researched other board games, started thinking about our game.
• Tues 28th - Our group met up and decided who was going to research what, split into pairs to focus on one question - Myself and Ryan looked at "What is Gameplay"
• Wed 29th - Everyone carried on with their research
• Thurs 30th - Met up again, showed each others research, started talking more about our game. Decided to add a board to our game
• Fri 1st Oct - Finalised the basic rules of our Game and how to play

Week 2

• Mon 4th - Made basic idea of what the board would look like, added dice to move around the board. Spoke about our boardgame idea with Nigel and talked about the use of dice, decided it would be ok for our game as its purely fun, not necessery to win to have fun.
• Tues 5th - Decided what equipment we needed and bought card to make a mock up board
• Wed 6th - I did some designs for the cards and board

• Thurs 7th - Made simple prototype of board and cards, decided what songs/lyrics we would use for each genre 
• Friday 8th - Finished off the cards and play tested. We found some problems and needed to change some things and add new rules. People were singing the song title which made it too easy to guess correctly - new rule - "Not allowed to sing the song title". Players would hit a wall if they didnt know the song, so decided to add lyrics to the cards as a clue so they have something to say/sing. Decided to make players complete at least one lap of the board before they could move into the middle circle, and they would also have to land on a main circle and answer correctly before they can move to the middle circle. found a problem with the die rules, had to Hum the song in reverse, so we changed the reverse rule to singing the song so that every letter starts with a "B". Overall we had lots of fun playing the game

Week 3

• Mon 11th -  Gave presentation on our game - asked people to play test it, everyone enjoyed it which was a good sign.
• Tues 12th - Officially resolved any problems we had with the game and decided who would design/make what for the final board. I was given the role of designing the cards
• Wed 13th - Made a few ideas of what the cards would look like.
• Thurs 14th - Met up and showed each others designs, Phil had designed what the box would look like and reece incorporated this into the board he had created by adding the box pattern to the board background.

Week 4

• Mon18th - We printed off the board
• Tues 19th - I sorted out the layout and sizes of the cards so that they would fit on the board, and typed up the songs and lyrics on the modern cards 
• Thurs 21st - Got all the the cards finished and typed up ready to print off. Jak will print off the cards and the rule book

Board Games

Monday 27th Sept

Today we were given our brief for the board games project, we will be working in our teams (Jak, Jake, Phil, Reece, Ryan and myself) to research design and create a prototype of our own boardgame. We spent the afternoon playing existing board games and deciding what made each game good or bad.

Pass the Bomb
The first game we played was called "Pass the Bomb" made by Gibson games and the game consisted of cards showing two or three letters and a "bomb" you could hold. It took everyone a little while to understand the game (the instructions had been lost!) however, we finally worked out how to play. One person started with the bomb and had to think of a word that used the letters on the card they had played, then the next person would think of a word and pass it on and so on. The bomb had a spontanious timer so whoever was holding the bomb when it "went off" (a rubbish sound effect that was difficult to hear) they would have to keep the card, and start a round again with a new card. The object of the game was to be the player with the least amount of cards.
We all enjoyed playing the game, even though we didnt win, and thats something we decided we wanted our game to be like. It was fast paced and you had to think on your toes so no one was waiting around for too long like some other board games. The random timer on the bomb was a good idea because we never knew when it was going to "go off" which built anticipation, and the cards had a good varitety of difficulty so it wasnt always too easy or too hard.

Blockus 3D
The next game we played was much easier to understand, however, only 4 of us could play. The aim of the game was too stack your coloured blocks and have the most blocks showing from a birds-eye-view. This was also fun to play and even though it looked like certain people would win, in the end, the underdog won, so there is never a clear winner. We played this game fairly casually, not thinking to much where we put our blocks, but it can be played with strategy so it would suit older age groups as well as children.

Evolutions
This was the next game we picked out, it was basically trivial pursuit but with extremely hard questions, we had a flick through the cards and couldn't find many that we would have known the answers to so we decided not to play. This would be good game for older generations or very clever people, like Stephen Fry, because they would find it challenging yet  have the abilty to answer some of the questions. This made us realise that we need to make our game easy enough to play, yet still be challenging.

Ghettopoly
When picking this game out, we chose it purely out of humour, and to see what this original monopoly had in comparison to the millions of other monopoly board games. We thought this would be a funny game to play as we fought over who would get the play as the "Pimp" and tryed to figure out what the "rock" was meant to be. However, the bombardment of steriotypical racism put us off the game quickly. As we tried to figure out who would want to play a game like this, we came to the conclusion that they probably wouldnt want to play monopoly in the first place, so we had to ask who was this game aimed at? This made us realise, when making our game, we really need to think about our target audience.

Steeple chase
This was the last game we played, it looked fairly old in comparison to the other games we had been playing. This was the most boring game we played, the object of the game was to roll the dice and move your horse around the board, shaped like a race track. The winner won purely on luck, so it didnt feel very satisfying to play.

The game we enjoyed most was Pass the Bomb, and the interactivity of it and so decided this was the way we wanted to go with our game. The other games also made us realise we must think about who our target audience will be and make this as wide as possible. We also want to make sure our game is enjoyable and not to hard to understand, without being dull and boring.

Our first idea for our game is similar to pass the bomb, however, rather than making words, you are given lyrics from songs on the cards and have to finish the lines.