Devlog 11

Unfortunately for most of the design portion of this development I did not get to participate due to strep throat that put me out of commission for a week. I did not get to play the game much at all and was sort of thrusted into learning all of the rules on the fly much like the people who play tested our game. Since I have a somewhat unique view compared to my creator counterparts, having little play experience allows me to talk about what I think worked well and clicked easiest. As a new player I think what worked well is the actual abilities printed on the cards, we had solid mechanics on them that weren’t too complicated or weird to use. The problem with the matching cards was actually finding them as it felt like there were so many cards that the game wasn’t moving fast enough. That brings me to what I think players have the most trouble with and that’s watching the cards you need go into the graveyard without being able to do anything about it. In our game it is common for other players to be holding cards that you could need to escape the house, such as the garlic needed to slay the vampire monster card. These highly important cards are often thrown away by other players because they simply have no use to them. I think this is a frustrating element of our game because it doesn’t feel as good to see the card fall into the graveyard and hope that you draw it next re-shuffle after the cards are exhausted from the deck on top of the various trap cards infesting the deck. In “Writing effective rules” James says “Describe core rules as clearly as possible, describe any exceptions clearly, and define significant game terms before you use them.” I honestly think we achieved this, its not that the way our game plays is confusing. I think the core rules are relatively simple to understand, however, I just don’t think our game FELT as good as a lot of the other ones I had the pleasure of playing. It felt like players weren’t forming strategies because you were just hoping to draw your item cards or one that it is useful to you at all. However, for the time I did get to work on “Escape!” I enjoyed myself and wish I could have been a bigger part of the design process.