Game Log 3

Overview

For Game Log 3, we have produced 3 mockups. One of which was refined for a playtesting session. This phase also naturally gave way to reflection and precision of the gameplay mechanics we envisioned for the full experience, and how the theme of Culture Remixed as well as the EU-values can play a pivotal role therein. Finally a playtest is conducted with 1 participant, providing us with valuable feedback for the last sprint before the exposition. 🖼️

Description of Mockup

The main mockup consists of a tabletop interface, which includes a deck of cards, 4 different types of cards and a gameboard. The cards represent different kinds of buildings that can be built on the gameboard, allowing for resource aggregation. When you have enough resources, further buildings may be erected, expanding your kingdom.

The Deck of Cards

To mimic a real world card game, this object is responsible for replenishing the player’s hand of cards. When the player seizes at the deck, they obtain all of the cards needed to fill the player’s hand, giving at most 5 cards. These cards are fanned out on the player’s right hand, enabling easy access.

Buildings include:

- Castle

- Barrack

- Farm

- Dwellings

The Gameboard

Upon a blue table in front of the player, a white plane divided into squares represents the game world. If the player intends to play a card on the board, the square closest to the playing hand provides a visual cue showing the square that will be affected by now having a building. Releasing the card builds it, showing a model of the building.

The Citizens

Citizens serve the single purpose of gathering resources. They will do this tirelessly, granting infinite growth! They are dragged around the gameboard to be appointed labour.

How was it made?

The mockup was selected from 3 independently created interactive mock-ups as the single best foundation for the full game. The others - internally playtested - served to underpin the implementation and mechanisms desired in the game. The 3 demos can be seen below.

This (Eduard’s) demo was elected for further development due to its close resemblance to the game’s vision.

Further Consideration of Gameplay Loop

In the creation of these, and particularly the chosen prototype, various choices were made regarding the gameplay and construction of it. The visual results of these conversations can be seen below. Note: These were only to a limited extend included in the main demo.

and law progression tree (right)

Assets made and intended for the demo

A castle building

A dwelling building

Play Test

An informal Think-Aloud play test was to conducted on the 2nd of May, 2025. Here we received feedback on the following:

- Heads up display (HUD)

In the demo, the information you were to base your decisions on came from a tedious interaction, involving gazing at a house and pinching to bring up a menu with statistics. Our play tester thought having a permanent display attached to the camera object would be an improvement, as it is always relevant while far more intuitive. This we implemented in the game through having the statistics always be displayed on a board in the back.

- Throwing Citizens

To move the citizens around, the player had to use the same gaze and pinch mechanism as mentioned before, which does not lend itself to the genre of board games naturally. Our play tester proposed picking the individual citizens up and being able to throw them as a fun modality of interaction with them. This gave way to us implementing a poking interaction, where you poked on the citizen and then poked on where you wanted them to go, for greater direct manipulation as an additional way of interacting for lesser tech-savvy people. This is also a trade off, as reaching far away tiles is physically challenging with direct manipulation, so having both overall seems to be the most fitting solution for our game.

- Cards Interacting

Similarly can be said about the cards, how gaze and pinch does not feel fluid in this context. You do indeed grab the cards from the deck with direct manipulation, but then you have to switch to gaze and pinch two times. First to select a card, then to place the building. We decided on not implementing it for simplicity sake regarding error correction when picking a wrong card, which would have been far more complex.

But overall, the play tester enjoyed the experience.