Killer- A board game

In our second unit of Game Changers we finished our game and perfect the  rules, looks, and mechanics for the game. Killer is a board game where players try to survive by not getting killed by another player and finding survival objects. Throughout the unit we looked at other published games and got professional advice to help us make our games the best they can be at the moment. We also reflected on mistakes and ideas that we've created in the past and used those ideas to further our game-play. Killer has evolved many times throughout it's creation and has taken many forms to be great.

As a player in Killer you move around the board playing as a killer or a survivor. The player moving as the killer is focusing on killing all other players in the game before they complete their objective. The killer does this by moving around the board with 2 4 sided die, and landing/crossing over the other player’s characters. 3 other players will play as survivors who roll a single 4 sided die to move their character and find hidden objects around the board that only the player playing the killer will know where it is. Players with survivor pieces will need to work together and use deduction to find pieces placed on the small map that only the player playing the killer can see.




Reflect

Getting Killer to where it is now, has been a long and difficult journey. When I first thought of the idea for Killer I was thinking about the name of the game Werewolf and correlated that to being some sort of killer that hunts players down. The first game layout started with the the board a little too much like battleship and that idea later transformed into the layout it is now. When it came to showing my game idea with the paper game board it was pretty difficult to play and explain because none of the rules had been written down or thoroughly thought of. During this play-testing session each group gathered feedback about how to improve or fix things about the game; I didn’t manage to get the most helpful feedback so most of the game evolution from there to the beginning of prototype 2 was my brainstorming.

Killer’s 2nd prototype was the game’s most important stage, from the feedback to the massive amount of necessary changes to make the game better in every way. In our first quarter of time that our 2nd prototype existed we didn’t have much time to play-test Killer, and only had time to fix up the rules to where we can put the game in prototype 3. Before we moved to prototype 3 we had Killer judged and shown off at a competition, where we gained a small bit of feedback on how to make the game a little more immersive.

After Chitag we took a break from all our games, and came back at them strong by talking to some professional game designers that gave us tons of incredible recommendations. The designer said that sometimes taking a break off of your game could be the most helpful step in making a game. We didn’t have much time to take breaks, but I was 2 steps ahead because I had already been doing that before we met the designer over our 1 week break. We then met with another game designer who recommended having a strong theme in a game was helpful; our game was already pretty themed but now that it’s more implemented into the game-play it works much better than before. This designer also came with other game designers, reviewers, and sellers to look at our games and give us lots of good info on making my game better; they were all such a big help when it came to getting these games closer to prototype 3 whether it was for the looks, player’s thought process, or the game-play.

"Killer first draft" (IF) 2016