The third lecture of Game Development Concepts has been posted. In this, we learn about the various formal aspects of games. This not only allows a common vocabulary, it also gives a jumping-point to analyzing games, which is critical for peer-review and collaboration and such. This critical analysis is the baseline beneath the Home-Play assignment assigned to us today. This assignment gave us a thematic element, and forbade us from doing the obvious things with that element--design a WW1 game without territorial control or destruction/death. The hardest level even forbade direct conflict. It is this level that I desired to operate at.
With these restrictions, I felt that a board game would be too tempting to violate the rules, so I settled on using cards as a central mechanic. After some research into WW1 soldier's lives, I decided to make it a Collection game with ration items as the collectables. Player interaction was deliberately crippled to ensure a lack of direct competition. The actual mechanics were thought over for a while, starting finalization after many mental play-throughs. After a first prototype was drawn up, I forced my poor family to play it, and implemented some of their suggestions for the second prototype, available here. This was a tougher challenge than the 15-minute board game, but I consider it to have been more rewarding and more successful.