Cardboard Kaiju Session 2

During this session Albert Park Flexi School will play test the cardboard kaiju game. the Men's Shed will continue to make the cardboard city as well as design a a 3D sign for a billboard

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaiju

The Plan: 22nd November

- Meet Albert Park group in the foyer and give them a run down of the plan to play test the game in the auditorium space.

- Men's Shed down in the Fab Lab hot-gluing the buildings together

- Any Men's Shed guys who are interested in using their laser cutter and design skills can design and cut out a 3D sign for the billboard building

Preparation

Have already constructed buildings near the cutouts that need to be constructed as a reference point

Hot glue guns

bowl of water and wet cloth (just in case for burns)

box cutters

cutting mats

long rulers (for folding)

Computer for design

Reflection

There were 10 community people in the space for this session. Lots of hands on deck! The Men's Shed guys got into a real flow of constructing the buildings and stayed from 10-2pm! An extra 2 hours! One of the guys worked on the computer to design a billboard (coffee shop) as well.

The Cardboard Kaiju game has influences from U-G-O by Michael Daniel, based on Yu-Gi-Oh, the collectible card game. See the rules here.

During the game prototyping and play testing session we ran into many obstacles, mainly derived from differences in opinions and preferences in regards to enjoyable, simple game play. To overcome these kind of time-sinks its important to, as a facilitator, make a decision as to what to go with and push for testing of it, acknowledging that if the idea doesn't work you will revisit the other options. It was essential to take notes, confirming what was written down and moving on. Breaking down the game in Player, Kaiju, Board/City was very helpful and breaking it down even more would be even better.

It's OK to come to the session with several ideas or models, as long as there is a genuine decision making process behind each of them.

Developing a game is an iterative process and requires much play testing, with outsiders not only the developers or the same group of people. Therefore it is more important to test and tweak, rinse and repeat and not solve every problem before your first test. Have someone write down the different solutions to each problem and highlight the one you are going to be testing. Keep notes during the play tests and review them afterwards, discussing fixes, tweaks or gameplay changes. The list should be shorter the more you test but there is no hard rule, something you won't notice until playing a few times. Besides, a game is never truly finished, there is always more to add or tweak.

Many ideas might seem good to start with but there is no way to know until it is actually tested properly, no matter your experience. Successful game studios make dozens of prototypes before settling for one that will be chosen for production, so don't be afraid to start over if it doesn't make sense. Don't force it. We had a backup game just in case this wouldn't work.

Photos