Our new game idea is a play on ‘Monopoly Deal‘ and will allow players to interact and be strategic more while playing the mechanics of the game. In our Game (which has yet to be named) you play as a student, and the game aims to keep their university, work and social life balanced throughout the game while completing classes to win. Our new game is in the form of a card game and does not have an accompanying board.
The card deck contains four different cards – action, relaxation, assessment and wildcards which will encourage players to play strategically and even haggle with each other. Encouraging this type of play and communication between players will allow for them to become more involved in the game and hopefully bring out the competitive side of some players.
The card deck is comprised of four different cards – Actions, Relaxation, Assessments and Wild Cards. Descriptions of each are below:
- Relaxation cards work as denominations and they counteraact the stress brought on by the action cards.
- Assessment cards are subcategorised into subjects (eg. English) and there may be three assessment cards that need to be collected before you pass a subject
- Action Cards hold a variety of moves including stealing other peoples assessment cards, removing their stress and taking bonus cards from the deck
- Other cards like wild cards, force-swap assessment cards and payment cards demanding relaxation points from other plays are also included
We have already played around with styles and have made prototypes for the cards. Examples of the designs are included below:
How to play:
Beginning – The introduction of characters and the setting. Exposition of rules and how the story will operate.
- Players recommended: 2 – 6
- Players are to shuffle the cards then deal five cards to each person. These cards are to face the player and are not to be shown to others.
- The rest of the cards are to be placed in the center of the plaeyrs table face down to become the deck.
Middle – Begins as soon as the game is set up and rules an mechanics are established. The actions in the game that we have created allow players to make interesting choices about what they want to do and express themselves in play. This pushes players to compete with each other throughout gameplay.
Gameplay loop:
- Each player takes their turn to put down cards from their hand in front of them.
- Players have the choice to play a single card or mutliple cards but only one card from each category can be played per turn.
- The aim is to balance the relaxation and assessment cards to cobmat the action cards that can be played
- Player strategically plays a card in front of them from a category. Players don’t have to play all three categories each loop.
End: Who wins, who loses?
- The game finishes when a player has successfully completed three ‘assessment’ card subjects by collecting three cards per subject.
Cost of production:
After researching the cost and production of this game we have found that some local shops like Officeworks prints card sized pictures for 10c each. So with essentially maths suggests that for 52 cards in the deck, it should cost $5.20 to make and may have some kind of bulk producing discounts to add to the final price. Advertisements for the game would be primarily through social media would also cut the costs for distribution.
Target Audience and Distribution:
The Target Audience for this game is specifically for university students rather than just UOW students to sell to a broader audience. Distribution starts small and through online shops, yet advertised through Facebook and sights that students would regularly visit.
Game Cultures 