Board Game Iteration

During our first week at University, we were tasked with creating a board game in 15 minutes. This week we revisited those games and looked at what changes could be made to improve them. Below are the changes I made to my game plus thoughts on how they affected it.


1. My first iteration was to introduce a 10 sided dice. I was initially using a regular 6 sided dice but felt that it was taking too long for players to move around the board. The change definitely helped speed up the game and while i would prefer to use a numbered spinner, the dice worked fine. I decided to make this change permanent to my game.


2. My second iteration was to introduce extra areas on the board which players could move to. This was brought in after a play test found that the game could become quite linear and frustrating with all players following the same path. While this change worked to an extent, I decided not to make it permanent as it actually increased the speed in which players were able to move around the board. While it may have given slightly more variety to the game, the way i implemented it meant that the game was over too soon.


3. My third iteration was to introduce a system where the players have to roll the exact number required to cross the finish line. For example, if a player was 5 spaces from the finish, they would need to roll a 5 and only a 5 to win. This change seemed to work really well and the play test resulted in two players battling right to the end. Because of this i decided to make this change permanent.


Due to the amount of play testing, those were the only iterations i made to my game this week. I found it to be a very useful way of not only improving our games but also learning them. Only after playing it numerous times did some smaller issues arise. I have noted these down and hope to make more iterations to my game in the future.