Practical: 15 Minute Challenge.

I, personally, love a challenge… be it creating something I’ve never done before or pushing harder to perfect the already perfect, I, am there.

  So, that being said, we were set the task of creating a playable board game in 15 minutes, a challenge in itself, but with conditions; the board must contain no more than 50 spaces.  The first thought that came to mind was a simple Snakes & Ladders type game on a 7x7 grid, that’s 49 spaces, lovely.  Now, I needed a premise, race to the end before your opponent, why not!

  My game started quite simple, a counter to represent each player on the board and two dice to roll for each move, land on a black square and on your next move, you can only throw one die instead of two.  Look below and you’ll find the initial board, much to be done, but that’s why we have “bug” testers; and during this task, they were the other game designers.

  The game has now been played, and feedback is on it's way.  So iterations one and two are here, there was no way to determine whether a player wins or not by rolling a number higher than the amount needed to finish the game. I added the "home-straight", where the player within the said area must roll the exact number required to win and by using only one die.

  Now, for another player to come in and "bug" test my game, and what better person than Rob Kurta.  He explained that a player should be able to challenge the other, and not let the board control those challenges.  The players should also have choice, and with this choice they can challenge the opponent or take a chance to gain an advantage on the board.  So after a in-depth conversation, iteration three and four have emerged.  Instead of the board deciding that if a player were to land on a dark square, they have to forfeit a dice roll, the  player can now choose to miss a go or to use one die instead of two.

  However, there is still no advantage for players that are disadvantaged by landing on a darkened square, so the final iteration of the task was to add squares the give the upper hand so-to-speak.

  Players that now land on a green square can choose whether the opponent misses a go or roll's only one die for their next move... although this game is nowhere near perfect, I believe that the challenge was a good one. To design a game in 15 minutes is easy, it won't be perfect, and that's why it has to be tested.  You can iterate  it a few times or a hundred times before it works; and if you cant get it to work, you can scrap it.  It's only taken an hour after all, and you haven't lost millions of pounds if you were creating a AAA video game.

  To conclude, I've designed a game in 15 minutes, after one hour, it's been tested and iterated.  I believe, after playing it a few times, it's a fun game; but by no means perfect.

A valuable lesson in any case, bring on game number two.