We are now "Livin' It Up" - Final Blog Post

Final Blog Post for "Livin' It Up"

By Jon Lee

After weeks of modifying and deliberation, we were able to see our game come to fruition. From "The 1%" to “Livin’ It Up”, Bishoy's original proposal has undergone a multitude of changes. It may be a completely different game but all the changes were to make the game more enjoyable, balanced, and especially fun.

Our main issue for the final week, besides design, was balancing the powers of the Executives. Through our playtesting early this week, we found that some of the Executives were too powerful to deal with. Sun was Mark Zuckerberg and his power was that he could look at anyone’s card. So whenever it was Sun’s turn, he would pick Bishoy and looked at his hand every time. This gave too much power to Sun so we decided to limit Zuckerberg’s power to be used when every 2 Luxury Items are formed or if the player has yet to make a Luxury Item. This idea was used for Kim Kardashian’s power as well where she can get 2 coins whenever two Luxury Items are formed.

Another issue we found was from playtesting in class. Bishoy noticed that Chaos cards were not being used as much as we hoped. One problem was that the cards cost too much to buy if players wanted another card. We downgraded the price from two gold coins to one gold coin. Also, only two Chaos cards, on average, were used during playtesting (deactivate powers and 50% off negotiated deal). We made two of these cards and introduced new cards as well. We added Chaos cards that allow players to get more money, as suggested by classmates. One card we found redundant was taking one coin from the bank. We increased that value to two coins and added another card for three coins.

The last mechanic that needed improvement was our points system. Our first playtest in class had the Luxury Items be on the order of ten. As Professor Parks suggested, a scale of 1-6 would be easier for players to manage. Thus we changed our scale to 2-5. Also we assigned arbitrary values in the first playtest so we actually thought out how to structure the points value. If the Luxury Item required a rare Parts 2 Go card or if it required four items to create, it would be worth five points. We followed this trend for the rest of the items.

As per designing the cards themselves, a handful of suggestions were made from our playtesting. My original idea for the Parts 2 Go cards included the list of Luxury Items that can be formed with that particular card. As this was revisited by our classmates, Sun included that on the card. Another suggestion was to have a picture of the Luxury Item on the Parts cards and the Parts on the Luxury Items cards. We tested both designs and opted for just the name of the Luxury Item on the Parts card and just the name of the parts on the Luxury Items cards. Sun was able to take these ideas and make them a reality. The cards that he designed are clean and look professional.

Overall, we received great feedback from our classmates and took them into serious consideration. We made changes where necessary and could not be happier with the results. We cannot wait for the class to play with our final product.