Postmortem


Intro:

Planet Plunder is a card game where 4 people - Cole, Harris, Jib and You Jin - collaborated. In this project, we first have to choose an existing game and change the game completely. We decided to choose Monopoly - Deal as our foundation. It has a stable structure of rules, systems, and objectives. The process of changing this rigid game was interesting because once we took out the money and rent system, the game changed completely. From that, we could add any rules and objectives that will fit our desired outcome.

What Went Right:

Overall, our game balances out and provides fair gameplay for the players. Due to the shuffling and random distribution of cards, players receive differently every time they play, however, players could come up with a different strategy to win the game even though they receive poor cards. The outcome becomes hard to anticipate. The other triumph of our game is simplicity. Rules are simple enough for players to jump into the game quickly and the design of the card was simple and delightful that matched the theme of the game.

What went Wrong:

In the system aspect, we had too many planet cards and action cards to start with. Our game becomes interesting when all the planet/area cards are revealed and out of the pile. However, since there are so many cards, it takes around 5 to 10mins to run out the pile. This slowed down the gameplay in general. 

In the design aspect, our wordings for the cards were ambiguous, which confused the players with the function of the card. Also, to provide a coherent story to the game, we should add the character to the players, for example, players can be a space conqueror. One of the playtesters pointed out that the design of the card makes the players hard to read the words. Naturally, we hold the cards in an acute angle, which blocks the words at the bottom of the cards. We placed all the important information at the bottom that players had a hard time reading the explanation.

Our rules were hard to understand in first sight. 

Changes for the Future:

For the future, we would decrease the number of cards: 12 planet cards to 9 and combine steal and attack cards, which have similar functions anyway. This will elevate the speed of the gameplay, which will strengthen the game experiences. We should also change the description of the rules and cards. Perhaps add visuals to help the understanding.

The back of the cards of planet cards and playing cards should be separated by changing the color. this won't confuse players and wonder what is the function of the planet cards.

Through this project, I learned that iterating an existing game is a long and difficult process, where if I change one objective, the rule of the game changes. Also, simple is the best. Especially from this project, more simple the rules and designs are, more admirable approach to the players. 

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