Week 06 - What's up

With this week’s devlog prompt being what I assume is kind of like a diary entry as to what we’ve done. We were tasked with reverse engineering one aspect of a game that we found interesting then turn it to a board game. While not having to turn the entire game to a board game helped a lot, I think we sometimes found it hard to really focus on the singular aspect we needed to keep. We liked the idea of resource management, but we weren’t sure which game to pull it from, or how to replicate it in a way for a board game. We also wanted it to be different than a “gotcha game” where you just look for crates with resources.

For our game we chose Oregon Trail as opposed to Fallout, Resident Evil or games of that nature. We wanted to emulate managing resources and survival-based decision making. We wanted to change some of the choices that you are forced to make. Essentially, our game consists of groups of people that are trying to get from point A to B with series of decisions and events that they will have to find their way through. It will start like the regular Oregon Trail game where you have a set amount of money and can load up on resources for the trip.

Your choices will force you to use resources, gain resources and we also discussed bringing them to other choices that would be like the same effect of committing a crime. For instance, in the Oregon Trail game, you can get your Oxen stolen. Well if that happens in the middle of your trip, you could be presented with the option to steal another groups. I would also like to think of a way that your decisions become limited, such as the choose your own adventure games we made in Junction. One choice influences the next.

I think the biggest thing for us is that we need to give players an amount of resources where they aren’t just extremely comfortable. They are still looking for more when acquirable but not scavenging. I think a good way that our board game emulates this is that players are able to start with money and choose which resources as well as how many resources they will get.