Our first line of discussion was finding our target audience. Since our game is a strategy based game, we can innovate that by sticking to the same genre but change its line of appeal such as the status of the counters, the colours of all the components, and change the complexity of the rules to make it easier for a younger audience to understand.
With reference to what was just said, to make the game appeal to a child, we would consider making the rules simpler and include shapes or numbers in the games mechanics.
We had a long chat about the games mechanics, its components and a rough overview of the rules. We decided to have around 10 pieces per player, each piece with a different value attached to it. Movement and upgrades for each of the players counters is turn based (for example, a player could decide to sacrifice a chance to move on the board for the sake of leveling up one of their selected pieces by one point.
From board game research we found games that target certain audiences have a fixed genre that appeals to that age group (e.g. a fantasy element for younger people).
We also thought it would be a good idea to include natural organic elements and symbols to class as attributes for each players pieces.
The game will consist of 2-4 players, who can deploy in each of the designated sections on the board (unless it is two player, where each player MUST deploy in opposite corners of the board).
The actual pieces used in the game will be 4 sided triangles, which have a number on each face so that when your counter levels up the player can spin the piece round according to the number it levels up to.
At this stage we want to focus on nailing the mechanics and the games rules before considering a theme, narrative or genre.
We continued to debate about the characteristics of the games mechanics and how the points system would work
Nigel had a chat with us and gave us some constructive feedback, pointing out the pros and cons of the game. A lot were cons because there were issues like the game could go on forever, too many pieces on the board, the boat being too big, having more players. Just trying to point us in the right direction.
Once we had left the session we decided to just crack on with something each and get a solid set of rules down before we changed our ideas again. I assigned myself to design the board.
We did brainstorm a couple of other game ideas, but we were convinced that this concept would work best, so we are going to take a shot in the dark at it and see how it goes.
Before we parted at the end of the session we assigned eachother tasks to get a solid grasp on the idea. One person to work on the rules, one on concept art for the board, rule book etc… I was assigned to design the board.
I kept it simple, since it is only going to be used for beta testing at this time.
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