I designed and programmed the entire game. I did research on other games in the genre and created an annotated bibliography of the strategy and goals behind both rock, paper, scissors, and also roguelikes as a genre. I compiled my intent, my research, and my testing results into a single document. I learned what made roguelikes, and especially Balatro, the game's main inspiration, so fun, which is the idea of "beating the odds",  and I designed and balanced a game where it could be fun enough to beat the odds but not too unfair that the player doesn't feel frustrated at losing over and over. I also designed the game to require strategy, but be mechanically simple at its core, which is why I based the game off of the simple game of Rock, Paper, Scissors. My intent was to make the game easy to pick up and play and learn, but require strategy to master. 

 I documented the systems I planned to include, including a Visual Design Document, an intent statement, and a research thesis on the project. I programmed it into Unity 2D using the C# coding language, using images from Adobe Stock, and music and audio from Champlain College's sound library. I tested the game among friends, and collected and interpreted the data from testing into the final version, including making balance changes and adding features. I made plans postmortem for what I wanted to do, and went back to the game later and created those systems as well before publishing the game to itch.io. 

From designing this game, I learned just how difficult balancing a game around chance is. You need to make the chance matter, but make it seem fair for the player. I also learned how to create a game from scratch, design a system, and then bring it to life, and how to test and balance around feedback received from said tests. 

I learned how to express my design concepts in a concise way in order to have a document that people that are onboarded to a team, such as artists, programmers, or other designers, can read and understand easily. I also improved my skills at the standards of game testing, how to set a game up for testing, what to look for, and how to analyze data received from testing and have it reflect on further iterations of the game. 

Finally, I learned a lot more about C#, and while I was nowhere near a master of it compared to dedicated programmers, I became confident enough in my coding ability to work on smaller mechanics in larger projects, or smaller projects such as this one. This, combined with other work done through my college education, made me a lot more confident with working in-engine than I was previously.