OUGD603 Brief 05: Second Meeting

Second Meeting:

For our second meeting we shared what research we had undertaken for the brief and to see if we could start having more of a focus in the direction of the game. As we are all new to a brief like this we did find it very challenging. Using the information I had found from 'A Brief Crash Course in Game Design' article we decided to look at what themes, mechanics and design goals we wanted to help get our ideas going.

We identified mechanics in games that we liked playing and that were the easiest for us to understand. We then decided that overall the theme of the game would be humorous with the intention of bringing people together for some light-hearted fun. 

Looking at games such as 'Eat Poop You Cat' and 'Telestrations' which uses the pictionary style play, but with a humorous twist.

Eat Poop You Cat:

Each player starts with a piece of paper and a pencil. At the top of the paper, each player writes a sentence. Then they pass the papers to their left. The next player "draws" the sentence a la Pictionary, then folds the paper so only the drawing is visible and passes it to their left. The next player looks at the drawing and writes a sentence that they think the drawing represents. This continues until all players have their original paper back. At the end, all players unfold their paper, and much hilarity ensues as "I am the Walrus, koo-koo-ca-choo" becomes "Hitler and I danced the night away in a disco."


The game continues until everyone runs out of paper or everyone has added something to each paper, always ending on a sentence.

Telestrations:

Each player begins by sketching a TELESTRATIONS word dictated by the roll of a die. The sand timer may limit the amount of time they get to execute their sketch. All players, all at the same time, pass their sketch to the next player, who must guess what's been drawn. Players then simultaneously pass their guess -- which hopefully matches the original word - to the next player who must try to draw the word they see - and so on.

Telestrations contains eight erasable sketchbooks and markers, a die, a 90 second sand-timer and 2,400 words to choose from.

These two games are similar to what we want to base our own around. Using what we had discussed we individually tried to make up a game, this proved to be very difficult as it probably needs a lot more thought.

We decided that further research and idea generation would be needed and this would be better done individually to keep the variation of ideas. We seem to be leaning towards card games which are light-hearted and humorous so research into this area will be more beneficial.