Week 3 - Visible Progress!

At this point in the game (pun intended), Empires of Trade has been making some serious progress.  In class, I designed some cards that we will be using (more or less) for the game and solidified some game rules. Outside of class we had two meetings thus far.  In the first meeting, Scott and I created a prototype for the board and doing so required collaborative effort.  Together we found a way to expand the map and were able to blow up an image of some selected continents to 4 pages, which we printed and taped together so it could be used as one cohesive board.  We had to figure out starting points, the particular symbols that we wanted to incorporate, and try to judge the distances between countries so that it was workable in creating “tracks”.    

           

         In the second meeting, Scott and Peter play tested the game using the rules we established in class. Though the meeting went well, the game's mechanics are not entirely completed.  After going home, Scott decided to playtest the game again with some friends and discovered that teaching the game was pretty simple.  The players caught on quickly manifesting that Empires of Trade is indeed understandable and workable. The first play test went pretty quick but he realized that the game needed to be more balanced out for each player.  Hence, the cities are now 5 "Spaces" away from each other and establishing a route now costs 8 gold which equates to 4 resource cards
.  Once these changes were applied, the play testing went even smoother. 

Finally, we are thinking of adding “event cards” to add more flavor, dimension, and time to the game.  And I am excited to see how this adds to the complexity, interaction and fun! 

Mahvish Irfan