Beyond Repair
Role: Designer, Documenter
Overview:
A small 2 vs 2 strategy guessing game that pits teams against each other in a standoff match to figure out which tools are right for the type of work. As described in the rules, communication plays a key role in this game as each team tries to get as many work orders completed and have more than their rival team. Presented during the Global Game Jam (2019).
What I did:
Create the rule sheets and assisted in developing and printing flash cards.
Postmortem
While other teams were more focused on creating a themed game through digital resources, we were the only team that went with the old physical approach of creating a simple board game. The hardest part about creating board games were creating the game mechanics from scratch. At first, we had no idea how we could innovate a board game when most of the concepts of fixing games had been used already in past presentations. There was only 4 of us in a team and we spent the last 6 hours trying to come up with some ideas for a repair game without making it look familiar.
I believe our strong point in this project was communication, which is always the simplest and hardest skill to maintain in team projects. We had a schedule, time, and task for each individual that needed to do their part in creating the game. I had my doubts, seeing as though we had to communicate the same instructions to each member so there was no room for error. But we managed to pull through with the design and testing of the game.
If I had to shoot out what went wrong with our project, that would be our presentations. In the past Game Jam competitions, we would always do a floor showing of our game, where anyone can come to our area and play the game. However, the situation changed the last minute when we needed to do a showing of the game in the main theater room, where we had no time to record a video demonstrating of our game. We did our best in explaining the rules and showing off the game play, but it felt like we lacked the basic means of presentation to our audience. This was an embarrassing moment, but I prefer to look at it as a lesson learned in taking extra preparations for presenting a game.