Week 6

Kryat

During this week I took on the task of designing the Grand beast/final boss character and/or animal as we wanted to make the beast a 3D model as well as the 4 player characters. As well as this me and my group members also conducted a second play test on a new version of beta playtesting which included abilities that the creatures have that can give players advantages and some disadvantages for other players adding competitive play to the game.

I also designed the second character which i decided to be a veterinary character based on the fact that this world is inhabited by many different types of animals so a vet seemed fitting.

Grand Beast/final boss designing

For the grand beast i first looked at Jakes (designers) Games Design Documentation and looked as the characters that he had created/designed to see if they fitted the idea of a boss character and from what i could find the only character that i believed fit as a boss animal/creature was the lion like creature that he called “Grizum”.

I eventually decided against using this creature as the grand boss as it was designed to be a creature that roamed the tundra region and since for the vertical slice we are only focusing on one region (forest/woodlands) it was not fitting.

At this point i was stumped for ideas about the grand beasts design until someone in my group mentioned the possibility of a “plant dragon” so i looked up images for inspiration and found these images:

These designs all seem to have no wings bare the middle design that's wings look more like roots and looks more menacing which could be good for a grand beast design also the first two are both covered in a layer of moss and leaves and plant growths to show that they are a plant based dragon i guess however the problem with these designs to me is that they were still not inspiring me enough for a menacing grand final boss for the game until i found the last images that is clearly based off a Venus fly trap with vicious teeth and covered in vines and leaves all in all all of these images i used for inspiration had good elements so i decided to use some Photoshop and drawing trickery in order to combine the elements of each that i liked to create my design for the grand beast.

These designs are how the combination of the 3 designs turned out i took the head design from the bottom left Venus fly trap design as i believed that design had the most evil looking head and would fit a grand boss also i took the legs from the Venus fly trap dragon i found online as i believed that the spikes on the back of the legs added to the meaning look i made the feet however look more like big overgrown roots inspired by the middle and top designs i found online as that adds to the nature/plant element of the dragon and portrays it more as a plant dragon fitting to be found in a large woodland like where our game is set. The tail design as well as the back of the body are inspired by the top design as the back spikes make the creature look more stereotypical dragon like and the moss on the spikes makes you again see that the dragon is one with nature and the tail is meant to be a combination of dragon tail and a branch that sprouts leaves to again show the connection to its environment.

For the card design i gave the design to kat and she redesigned and illustrated it to be more dragon like adding a giant dragon like thin to the back of the head, changing the feet to look more dragon like because she thought it would make it hard for the creature to walk and removing the spikes and moving the legs back a tad as and i agree with her here it looked painful for the dragon to walk which resulted in this finalised design (image by kat not mine) which i believe still keep the menacing plant element but makes the design more stereo typically dragon like.

The dragon also looks more simplistic which matches the style of the card designs and also means it may take less time to model and if 3D printed may not lose too much detail as its a semi-simple design.

Play-testing 2 - Creature abilities

For the play test we conducted this week we played threw the game with a group of students in our year first by starting off playing the game as we did in week before where we did the core game play loop of collecting creatures and die to fight the grand beast and then we tested the game play with the same people using the abilities as well as of the creatures to see how the players would react.

From this play test we found that

Some of the abilities on cards did int work as intended for example ones that said revive or get a fallen creature from the discard pile this didn't work as the discard pile was the bottom of the main deck meaning that the players wouldn't be able to get a fallen creature from it and instead grabbed the next creature in the deck
The classifications on the cards of when each ability can/cannot be used are not clear enough

Improvements

In order to improve our game based on these play test findings we firstly decided to address the problem of the discard by making the description on the cards more specific to say “your discard pile” meaning now anytime a player uses an ability they will place that card face down in a pile next to them and that's their personal pile of fallen creatures that they can get back if an ability is used that states this.

We also look at the way the abilities are used and when as many players were confused at how to use them during game play this could have been due to no rule book because this was a beta stage play through however, we still decided to specify more clearly that instead of having DC (during capture) and AC (after capture) written on the cards to instead have it so every turn a player can either use an ability or attempt to capture another creature to gain more dice.

Initial Vet designs

Also, this week i started to design the initial veterinarian designs, first i wanted to keep the sketch in the same style as the original hunter sketches i did in order to get a basic idea of what i wanted the character to look like, i decided to have the veterinarian be a modern vet with the classic blue gown shirt and a stethoscope as well as gloves and a medic bag with the classic red cross on it to inform people that they are a healer.

I then expanded on this design i drew what i imagine the veterinarian model to look like i decided to give them an animal friend on the base to show that animals and creatures feel safe around her and and have them hold a blood bag and a needle to possible show that they have the ability to heal themselves (if that mechanic is ever decided on being needed)

I think that this design for the veterinarian turned out well however I don't feel it fits the fantasy style of the game as shown from the creatures so design may need to be refined.