Design Document

05/03/15

I am making changes to the ancient game Senet for my design document, my game is called Sick Senet. The changes I have implemented are slight but I think have made the game into a war/race game. The game is diffidently more competitive and frustrating depending on the players chosen tactics and play style. 

The first change I have made is the Board Layout. This keeps the same amount of squares but
changes the layout. All the special squares are still on the same number squares (15, 26-­29). This should make the player feel like they are closer to the finish. It does this by making it clearer to see where the players are in relation to the finish. 

The second change I made is I implemented a Capture mechanic. Players can take their opponents counters and add them to their own, creating a stack or adding to it (see third rule ‘Stacking’). Stacks can only capture opponents counters/stacks if their own has a greater number of counters in it. This should create more competitiveness, frustration and further the tactics involved in playing the game.

  

The third change I made is a Stacking mechanic. This rule goes hand in hand with the Capture mechanic. Players can stack their counters to make them more powerful. If one player’s counter stack is greater than the other player’s stack, they over power them.

I also changed how pieces Entering The Board. This change involves all player’s pieces having to enter the board at square one instead of starting along the first two rows on the board at the start of the game. This rule was added after the ‘Capture’ and ‘Stacking’ rules were made, to prevent the layers from capturing each others pieces too early on in game play.  

The results from playing this version of the game showed that these changes force the players to play with more competitiveness. When playing Sick Senet, players became more interested and emotionally invested in the game because of the increased competitiveness in gameplay.

There are still a few slight changes that I think need to be made to iron out little problems but overall I think I have made a good game.

06/03/15

David Parlett visited the university this week and delivered a games workshop in which he concentrated on race games, we were asked to design non digital race games which did not use a dice. David Parlett has won many rewards including a game of the year award.