Welcome back to my game design vlog series. In this episode, I walk through the first complete hand of the game, Madder than a Hatter, and encounter quite a few snags along the way. At the end, I briefly discuss the theme and why it is important to this design.
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I totally agree about creating a more “finished” looking prototype. It is a waste of time for a lot of people but for me I need the game to be a complete experience. I generate the mechanic around the theme and without a good looking proto it feels incomplete.
One thing I didn’t mention in the video is how much a decent looking prototype can change the feeling of a simple game. With a larger, meatier game where the mechanics can stand on their own, it’s not so important. With a simple game, however, much of the “feel” comes from the presentation. It’s important to me that the presentation doesn’t get in the way of the game.
Regarding your game, it may be more successful to let players have some foreknowledge of what cards are going to come up – so a river of cards. That way they can deliberately stick other players and avoid perilous cards. There should also be ways to manipulate the river for trough good cardplay
Ooh! Totally playing with this idea for Ep 2! Thanks!
For the special power cards: the one that allows you to take a faceup card, if you could use that to take a card that takes is part of someone’s monopoly, that would be “playing mean” imo
Very true! I may go with “that is not part of a monopoly” and I could then include the “don’t count one suit” card!
oh, and if you can’t play a card on yourself, even if you have a 3 of a kind in your hand, it will be very difficult to get anyone to give you the 4th card to “shoot the moon”
Also true. This is why I rapid prototype. I’m really not good at seeing those types of plays in my head.
Stephen mentions having a river of cards, which is a good idea, and then goes on to talk about ways to manipulate the river. You want to encourage people to play cards, but the risk is that they get caught with a pair of hats. So what if the only way to manipulate the river was if you have a pair in front of you. It would encourage people to do something that ordinarily they wouldn’t want to do, which is play a pair of hats in front of them. Risk/Reward.
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