Working alone, students will modify a simple 2-player card game. Each student will be given a starting game to modify by the instructor.
Design goal: work through a design analysis and then redesign a game in order to address the problems you found. Your main design focus is to identify one or more problems in the existing game, and then make changes to the rules that will begin to solve the problems you identified. There are no “right” or “wrong” problems or solutions. You decide what you want to consider a problem – and in so doing, you also create criteria for whether or not you solved the problem you gave yourself.
Design goal: create a successful play experience. In addition, a related design goal is to end up with a game that is balanced and playable. Does the card game provide both players with meaningful choices? Does the pacing of the experience feel right? Does the game retain the relative clarity and simplicity of the original version and not get too confusing, complex, or fussy? (This design goal will be part of many of your other projects in this class as well).
Making use of playingcards.io, Your group should first play your game a few times, while discussing what you think is wrong with it and what you want to change. Then immediately start playtesting ideas. Iterate and playtest, seeing what changes do to your design.
PROTIP: How do you know when you have modified a game too much? If you have changed the design so much that an innocent bystander would not be able to identify the original from a list of the games initially distributed to the class, you have changed it too far beyond recognition. However, don’t be too concerned about whether or not you change things too much – you should focus on the two design goals above.
On the due date, please have the following ready to turn in:
Shuffle a deck of cards and place all of them face down in a grid 4 cards tall and 13 cards wide. Players take turns choosing two cards to flip over. If the two cards have the same face/number and color, the player has found a match and takes them off the grid. If it is not a match the player puts the cards back down on the grid where they found them. The player with the most matches by the end of the game wins.
Shuffle a deck of cards and place the deck face down in the center of the table. Each player draws a hand of 3 cards. Players take turns asking one other player if they have a specific numbered or face card. For example one would say "Hey Todd, do you have any eights?" or "Hey Jackie, do you have any queens?" If the player in question does have a desired card, they must give it to the player who asked the question. If they do not they say "Go Fish" and the player who asked the question must draw a card from the top of the deck.
If a player has four of the cards of the same number or face in their hand they remove the cards from their hand and place them on the table. This becomes a set. The game ends when all possible sets are made. If a player's hand is empty they must still ask other players for cards.
This game is for two players. Shuffle a deck and distribute the cards evenly between two players face down, and have each player keep their cards in front of them. To play have each player flip over the top card of their deck and place it in front of them on the table. The player with the higher ranking card takes both of the face up cards and puts them on bottom of their deck.
If the two cards have the same rank, this means it is war. Players continue to place cards face up on top of the original one at the same time until one of them is higher than the other. The player who wins the war collects all the cards and adds them to the bottom of their deck.
The game ends when one player owns all of the cards.