The past 4 weeks or so has proved to be incredibly beneficial in my understanding of the work that goes in to creating a board game. Prior to developing my game, I was completely unaware as to how essential the play-testing phase is, in the development of a game. Had it not been for play-testing, I would not have known how vague some of my game rules were and this would have led to a fairly poor game experience for players, as a result.
Play-testing early on in the process of development is so crucial, and one of the biggest things I took away from this subject is that you can and should play-test your game early, even if the game is in its early iteration. In my first play-test, all I had was a poorly drawn grid on an A4 piece of paper and some character cards and tokens. I hadn’t even had a concrete set of rules, at that point, which indicates how early this playtest was, in the development process.
In my personal experience, play-testing is, at its basic form, a way of learning whether your project is heading in the right direction and also learning about different possibilities for your project, that you had not thought about previously. For example, in my second play-test one of the play-testers suggested that I implement the use of a timer, in the choice card round, in order for players to make a decision based on instinct, rather than logic. Through this suggestion, I realised that this would make the game infinitely more interesting than it could have been.
Furthermore, in my 3rd play-test, I incorporated a layer of hidden information, which was suggested in the feedback from my 2nd play-test. As it turns out, however, the hidden information component adds a level of unnecessary complexity and doesn’t quite work.
That’s it for now, folks, but I will leave you with the current iteration of the game rules, which have been altered throughout development. Having said that, I am continuing to alter the rules, so the game rules in my portfolio will almost definitely be different to those below.
Set Up
Each player takes a character card and a character token. Various black tokens are to be scattered around the board.
Each character token (except for the killer) is placed in the same quadrant of the board.
The killer’s token is to be placed in an opposite quadrant to the other players.
Game Rules
1. In order to win, players (who aren’t the killer) must either collect all the key components fix their car or kill the killer. The killer, however, must try and kill the rest of the players.
2. If the final girl dies , the game is over
3. Players get 4 action movement points per turn and begin the game with 10 health points. The killer, however, gets 6 action movement points
4. Players may store action movement points for their next turn, but must use at least 1 point per turn
5. All players, except whoever is the killer, starts the game in the same quadrant
6. Players can move in a forward, backward OR horizontal direction.
7. At the end of each round, a player is given a choice card where a scenario is proposed that will have possible repercussions on the rest of the game.
8. Players have 10 seconds to make a decision (unless their character has a + intelligence trait, in which case they get 15 seconds)
9. Depending on the choices made, player may find themselves moved across the board as a result. This does not utilise any of the player’s action movements for their next turn
10. Players have to be within a square of another character in order to perform an attack
11. When a player is attacking, the dice is rolled to determine the amount of damage dealt on the player being attacked.
12. If the player being attacked has a DMG Resistant trait, the player attacking must roll a 3 or higher to inflict any damage
Game Cultures 