For the prototype of the game Meme-ery only a few material components are being used to experiment with. These material components are the analogue playing cards which are the basis for the game playing. Due to the materials of this game being very limited, one could say that the price of creating, distributing and marketing will be quite low which is good.
I started my prototype for the game by using paper as my cards in order to set it up and be able to see it physically and test run the game. Overall the paper was annoying to use for this but it served its purpose as examples of the real thing that might be created. This would definitely work better on proper playing cards.
Just like chin music my deck will consist of 36 cards altogether, this will include the meme names that the players will memorise plus the action cards which will determine how the game is played. Having this many cards will allow me to test out the game to see if my idea will work and allow me to see problems with the gameplay and gameplay loops. I found that with this number of cards the maximum number of players will have to be cut at 5 per game, which isn’t too bad.
I also played with the design of the cards which was very enjoyable. I wanted to create cards which were visually appealing since I have found that people will reach for these more over other designs. This type of design includes clean lines and fonts with some kind of colour but not too much to overtake. Having a balance of these design components be worked out through experimentation, but for now, these cards will be simple until testing is very much complete.
My game overall is set out to be something that people will bring out to have a quick and fun match with friends. I want this game to be simple enough that it can be picked up by anyone and it becomes second nature to know what they have to do. During the class, we had to pick out cards which would help us put on different lenses and think of our game in a new light.
The playtesting for this week went fine, there were a few hiccups with the rules and how I had given them to the players – they were a bit confused by my verbal instructions. The players went through the game somewhat smoothly however some of the longer meme names were showing harder for people to remember properly which made the game a little rough and unnecessarily difficult, this is something that I will definitely be fixing before the next playtest.
The gameplay loop so far is:
- A player receits all cards the other players put down in the middle – Other players can call ‘mistake‘ and once checked and tconfirmed, ‘A player’ has to pick up all cards from middle and add it to their hand
- A player puts down their own card – either a normal playing card, or Action Card
- Action Card – Affects gameplay and changes it up
- Normal card – Game moves on to next player
- Repeat
Game Cultures 