Dev Blog

Entry 1 - 9/25 - Siddhant Banerjee

The pieces we picked for our game include $1 and $5 poker chips, red and yellow gemstones, and dice with two plus signs, two minus signs, and two blank sides. Our first idea so far is to make a mining-themed game. It makes sense considering the gemstones and the currency that can be used to pay players for what they mine. The dice would be rolled to determine mining result [(+) earns a gem, (-) costs the player a dollar, and a blank means nothing was found] We are also considering making a modular, 3D-printed board, but it might be too ambitious for the first draft this week; we’ll probably just use cardboard for now.

Entry 2 - 9/27 - Charlie Baldwin

Continuing with the idea we came up with on 9/25, we are working out how the gameplay mechanics of mining resources would work. Our plan is to have players start with $5 and take turns purchasing tiles. For each dollar they spend on a tile, they get to roll a die to calculate how many resources they earn. And since a (-) roll costs the player's a dollar, the goal of the game will be to own all tiles surrounding another tile. If that happens, (-) rolls become (+) rolls.

The current problems that we are encountering are that we have a very limited amount of currency chips to work with and no way to mark what tiles a player owns. If we use the spent chips to mark the tiles, their is nothing differentiating one player's tiles from another's. One solution for the limited number of chips is making the maximum amount of money a player can spend on a tile $5 so the $1 chips are able to be put back into play after a tile is fully purchased. The latter problem can be solved by separating the place-spaces of opponents, but then we must come up with something to put in the middle.

Entry 3 - 9/28 - Aidan Mayer

For the middle of the board, we came up with an idea: players slide the gems they mine in the first stage onto circles to gain points (similar to a shuffle board). This allows us to circumnavigate our early-game currency deficiency, because the amount of gems you can gather directly relates to how well you can do in the late-game. Points can be distributed using the chips.

Since this idea requires progression from one stage to another, we must now implement a system where players can move towards the middle of the board. The only tool we have to do this is our four dice, so mining must be pushed onto the back-burner for now. With no way to mark player position, our only option is to have dice be used congruently as both player markers and move deciders. A (+) roll will allow players to move forward, a (-) roll will allow players to move either left or right, and a blank roll will force players to not move. This method of reading the die will keep players from moving too fast -- they will need on average 18 moves to reach the center of the board. In place of mining, players will collect pre-placed gems during their progression through the first stage.

Entry 4 - 9/28 - Carlos Velasquez

To make the first prototype of our game, we have collected a pizza box and some other scrap cardboard. The pizza box is a perfect size to make a diamond arena in the center of the board. We are using the sides of a small box to make the stage one platforms. We taped and perforated the three pieces together to allow the board to be folded and stored more easily. Lastly, we used the edges of the pizza box to give the center arena a retaining wall to prevent gems from flying out of the play area.

Taking into consideration the board's scale and the gameplay mechanics we have implemented thus far, it makes sense to have a 2v2 format in the game. This will add more strategy in the collection of gems during the first stage and more amusing chaos in the launching of gems during the second stage. We also finalized how we want to setup the gems so larger deposits are harder to get than smaller ones.

Entry 5 - 9/28 - Nathan Klingensmith

With the core mechanics coming to fruition and the board structurally solid, we need to develop lore that makes it all cohesive and that players can really sink their teeth into. The setting we have landed on is space, with the center of the board being a resource-heavy planet. The gems will be miners that players launch into resource deposits on the planets to mine valuable ores, earning their crew money. Since miners floating around in space doesn't make much sense, players will be picking up space junk on their way to the planet and creating miners out of them.

With logical reasoning completed, we wanted to make the lore more playful and give players direction. Teams will be deep-space mining crews (Interstellar Spelunkers) trying to beat an opposing faction to the riches of a new-found planet. This gives the game a gold-rush-esque vibe set in an interesting atmosphere. As a penalty of not out-spelunking the other crew and losing the game, we are adding the comical tidbit that players will lose their jobs.

Entry 6 - 9/30 - Nathan Klingensmith

The feedback we received on 9/29 was very good, but also very constructive. The Spelunking Stage is really fun, but the current status of resource deposits are poor -- the 5-point circle in the middle is too over-powered, making the 1's on the outer rim basically useless. The Space Stage is boring and too random. Players became frustrated by rolling (-)'s and blanks over and over, and never progressing forward.

Players also interpreted the resource deposits in the Spelunking Stage as individual planets. We like that idea more, so instead of a giant planet, the center of the game board will be a solar system with smaller planets and asteroids that can be landed on and mined.

Entry 7 - 9/30 - Aidan Mayer

To eliminate the possibility of being stuck in the Space Stage, we are completely getting rid of the current movement system that has 2/3 of rolls keep players from progressing. Instead, all rolls will be worth a certain amount of moves: blank rolls are 1 move, (-) rolls are 2 moves, and (+) rolls are 3 moves. This gives players much more freedom and a greater feeling of choice in space junk collection. To allow for this new mechanic, we need to expand the size of the Space Stage. So instead of using rectangular tiles, we are going to use hexagons that allow more motion, more tiles, and fit the space theme much better.

For the Spelunking Stage, we decided to simplify the distribution of resource locations from ten to five. The new format has two 1-point planets near each teams' launching zones, two 2-point planets on the left and right for teams to fight over, and an exploded star in the very center. The star has two asteroid rings around it that are respectively 2 points and 3 points. But if a team lands a miner in the core of the star, they lose 5 points.

As we tested this version of the game, we found that way too many miners end up scattered on the board. To prevent this, we added two black holes in the solar system. These will warp miners back into the Space Stage, allowing teams to recollect them. For randomization, miners will be warped back to one of three worm holes, decided by a dice roll. This allows for more complexity and strategy in the game because players can now go back and forth between the Space and Spelunking Stage to maximize their point earnings.

Entry 8 - 9/31 - Siddhant Banerjee

To fit the space theme, we decided to develop custom art assets to cover the board with. In Photoshop, we used a variety of tools to create a atmosphere that players can really set themselves inside of. Designing the aesthetics digitally allowed us to make perfectly-proportioned hexagons and incredibly elaborate resource locations that increased the production value of the game significantly. Because of its size, we had to split up the design into eight printable pieces: two for each Space Stage and four to cover the Spelunking Stage. After applying the art assets and taping it all together, we are very happy with the final prototype of Interstellar Spelunkers; it successfully gets across all of the ideas we want to convey with just cardboard and paper.

Entry 9 - 10/1 - Charlie Baldwin

Our second iteration seems to be very successful! Both the new art on the board and the new revision of the rules made this game a hit with the group that played it in class today. We did a good job of ironing out the bugs that made the first version less fun to play. The new movement mechanics for the Space Stage significantly reduced the players' frustrations with being held back in the first stage. Also, by removing the 5-point circle at the center of the board, we were able to make the game last longer and have better balance, since the money supply doesn't deplete as quickly.

We were actually very surprised by how positive the feedback for our game was. It seems that the main draws of the game are its engaging art and lore combined with its unique physical gameplay found in the Spelunking Stage. One of the play-testers even loved it so much that he actually ended up buying the board off us (which technically makes it the first sale we've made in our careers as game designers).