Day Three

Today we were visited by two individuals who have worked together to publish games through Mayfair in the past. The talked to us about how the process of game development goes, telling us there is no "one way" that works. Their stories of how some games take years to develop made me nervous for actually completing the assignment to design a game during this interim. However, they also triggered an idea for me in the middle of their talk by telling us we should work with something that we know. I have a pretty well roughed out idea that I am working on now, but I have some doubts that it will actually be very coherent any time soon.

Digger's Garden Match

After they shared their stories with us they also shared some games. I ended up at the table playing a children's color/shape matching game. It used hexes with one color per side and a particular quantity of a particular shape. The idea was to match colors and/or shapes on one or more sides of a hex in order to score the number of points total enclosed in matching sections. The game seems simple on its surface but we quickly discovered that there are ways to be clever about placement in order to set up future plays. Being much older than the game's target audience, we aimed for the highest scoring placements as we possibly could, to the point of contemplating moves for minutes at a time.

I was usually one of the highest scorers each time around the table and so when I ran out of tiles with a placement worth 11 points and was far ahead of the pack I was correct to be confident in winning. Although I should not take much pride in winning such a simple game, but it was entertaining to fill a few minutes in the middle of class.

Puerto Rico

The next game that we played was Puerto Rico. I have played this game before with my family and was expecting to have to teach it, but I did not end up having to do it alone. It was interesting to hear some of the little differences in house rules as we tag-teamed the explanations. We ran out of time to finish the game, which was disappointing, but fine with me since I had plans to go home and play one of the new games from the pile rented from Out of the Box.

Relic Runners

Neither of us playing this game had played it before, so I read the rules in their entirety (or so I thought, apparently I neglected the final scoring section that explains the 5 victory points per type of relic as opposed to per relic, period, so the victory really doesn't count). This game was interesting in the fact that players had to move around, exploring the ruins and temples scattered throughout the jungle. I enjoyed "capturing" relics by making extremely long sets of explored trails to get the most victory points I could when capturing a new type of relic. The pieces are really fun to play with because they are really detailed and colorful. I liked this game and would like to play again, but I want to play the rest of the pile, so I'll have to see about borrowing it from someone else later.