Today was finally the day we formally presented our card game to the professionals! Every single member of our group was a big nervous about this day. This was not just a day in which we were going to be able to fix more glitches in the game. Today was for real. What if they didn't like our designs? What if they didn't like our mechanics? What if they didn't have fun? These were all questions that were flowing through our heads as the professional game developers sat down to play Villains. Luckily for us, all of the people we presented our game to liked the graphics in the cards very much, and all really did like the objective of the game. It was fun for them to build the attack necessary to be able to take the victims in the center pile. A concern that we came across is keeping track of turns (if some special card added a turn or took one away). Also, some of the text in the cards might have been a bit too tricky or too complicated, so it should have been modified so the context of it was clearer to the audience. Another thing was "the luck of the draw" issue. We did receive some complaints about people not being able to formulate a complete attack because they could not get all of the evidence cards all at once. The main part of the problem we believe was that the cards were not properly shuffled (especially because they were kind of big and not very easy to manipulate).

In my point of view, I think that this was a very successful day. We did not receive comments about drastically changing the game, just little glitches here and there. I (Cindy) really did have a great time working with the rest of my group and coming up with all different approaches to handling problems that came about the game. I'm very proud of the end result, and I believe the rest of the girls are too. We worked really hard, and it is very impressive how much the game has changed since the very beginning. Creating a board game will be a bigger effort, but I'm more than ready for the challenge!

Today (2/22/) we were prepared with all our cards and had a structure ready to go. We all got to see how the cards looked with the backs glued to them (which is the card cover) and since we all printed color cards, it added a vibe to the game. Everyone really liked the characters and different things going on in our game which is great. After adding in some actions to the cards it did make the game a tad bit juicy but the game still seems to drag. We came to realize many problems in our game after other groups playtested it.

I feel like the major problem we have is the fact that the game drags and gets boring after a while. We definitely don't want that to happen, a game is supposed to be fun. We've decided (and still are) to add more actions to the cards, and also to add 5 really cool actions to the deck (similar to our donut & police card). This way it might spice up the game a bit. We plan on meeting over this weekend to get down more ideas and put them to work... at this point we don't want to add an entire new deck (it's going to be a lot of work, and take lots of time) which many people have suggested. I think our best bet is to go for the 5 action cards. Hopefully it'll add another twist to the game and make it more interactive rather than each player just doing their own thing. Now all we have to do is come up with really awesome ideas.

February 15th was play testing day; our prototypes were designed and ready to be played with. Our design turned out to be very unique and interesting to look at. Unfortunately, one of our members made her set of cards a tad bigger than the rest, so it was a bit more difficult to actually play the game. While playing it the first round, we discovered that our game wasn't as exciting and entertaining as we thought it would be. The problem was that for each round, we were basically one by one, putting down cards to build up our attack. Realizing this glitch in our game, we knew we had to make changes fast! Furthermore, we decided to add specialties onto the victim and villain cards. For example, we added negative consequences on the villain cards that had a lot of points and vice versa. We tried to avoid the "rich get richer" method. With the changes, the game got a bit more interesting. We were/ and still is debating whether or not to have a separate action card deck; this action card deck will determine the moves of each player each round. This new idea seems like it will make the game more exciting, but we're not sure if this will make the game more complicated to make and play. Hopefully we'll be able to decide on something soon because next week is when other teams will be playing our game!

Villains is really starting to take shape. This week, on February 8th, our discussions got extremely detailed and at times, even a bit stressful. After figuring out the mechanics last week, it was time for us to get more of the features in order. What seemed simple, turned out to be a lot of work.

We started off brainstorming some "supercharges" to put into the game. These would be an attack made up of a villain, victim, weapon, disguise and a plan that all worked together and if played, would give the player double the points. But as we tried to come up with these, we realized the "plan" cards, were really hard to come up with and also would not make sense with other cards. We scrapped the plan idea, and came up with a "location card." With this new element we were able to finalize our supercharge cards, some being the Justin Bieber victim supercharge, another being the classic nerd and bully. With the special cards out of the way, we split up the other card categories and created a number of cards for each.

By the time we finished up, after all of the fuss over our supercharges and getting them just right (which took awhile, and a lot of scribbling out in our notebooks), we really ended up with an interesting set of cards! One thing we have in the works though, which we plan to look into after our first round of playtesting, is adding special abilities to cards that have low energy levels, to reduce the luck in the game. But, as of now we're all working to finish up a working deck of cards for our test! Hope all goes well...fingers crossed!

On the week of 2/1/12 the card game discussion began to get intense. The way that every single group member is getting involved in this card game is exceptional. I feel a real connection to every one of the girls and although sometimes we disagree, we always end up finding our way out. In a way, I feel as if I am a real game maker, and this game will actually be published to the world.

The name of our card game is Villans. Tiffany was who dawned upon this great idea. The newly improved objective of the game (which is here to stay) is to be able to collect as many victims as possible. These victims will be laid out in the center of the table (we are still determining the number of victims that will be available on the table). After all of the victims have been laid out, then five cards will be distributed to each player. Then, each player has to try and obtain a villain, a weapon, a plan, and some evidence (each of the different cards have all different types of energies that determine how powerful each of those things are). For each turn, every person gets up to three turns which can be: put a card down, draw a card, or simply just pass on to the next player. All of this can be done as long as the player has no more than 7 cards by the end of his or her turn.

In addition, there are also specialty cards such as the police, which can allow a player (does not have to be in his or her turn) to be able to prevent a player from taking a victim. There are going to be other specialty cards in the deck, but those are yet to be determined.

I'm really excited to try out our prototype. I know it's going to be amazing, but I also know that we have to give it a try to fix all of the glitches that are yet to come. This week hopefully we will type up all the game regulations and we can move on from then.

I can't wait to play this game in full mode!

-Cindy Ruiz-Higa

So last Wednesday 1/25/2012 was the first day of our group discussion where each member of the group presented their respective proposal for a card game. The leader of this group was Zanera (me) and it was her responsibility to hear out each group members proposal and then express what she and others thought about it. As a leader I felt as if this task wasn't as tough as it sounded it to be. After hearing everyone's proposal, the group kind of just leaned toward one idea that we all really liked and therefore avoiding any possible disagreements- that was really awesome. 

Additionally, we all worked together and talked about the proposal we chose. Throughout class we discussed potential ideas once we really understood the game Tiffany presented us with us. For me it was a really amazing experience. Group members just kept coming with ideas and how to improve the game, it was exciting to see how enthused everyone was throughout class. Even while the professor was talking, the girls kept coming up with ideas, and I really enjoyed seeing that. This helped us all move forward to something better and more challenging. The initial idea of the game was a little hard to grasp but after it was explained to us we immediately started thinking of ways to make it even better. We realized that the strategy was a little to easy for everyone, and so we moved to create something more complex. 

We all have great ideas, and hopefully we'll accomplish more this week!