Documenting the Rules

We're sorry that we've not been keeping the blog activity up. However, we do have some small news to share.

As playtesting has been ongoing, the gameplay design has been undergoing regular maintenance and tweaking in order to work out all of the potential issues. Things that have been focused on include the length of time that a single playthrough can take, repercussions of combat, and alternate ways for the endgame to change.

From the design discussions, we have been writing and designing a layout for a rulebook which will provide a comprehensive manual on how everything works in the game. We will be using this to guide players when we take the game to the public for beta testing in the near-future. From that point, the rules will continue to be tweaked to create the optimal experience for the players.

In the meantime, we've been having a lot of fun trying out all of the different ideas and alternative methods that have sprung up during our playtesting, and hope that we've almost found the gameplay that allows the game to be fun and open-ended while curbing disorganisation and chaos.

A team meeting will be taking place this week to discuss our next steps, and we will keep you informed as the process develops.

Thank you for reading, from the Red Carpet!

Playtest 2!

Hello all,

Sorry for the silence the last few days, however we are back with a quick update on our progress. Last night Charlie completed a second playthrough of the game with some minor tweaks to the original rule set, don't want to give much away hopefully we can have some form of visual first pass of the rule set up for your viewing pleasure in future posts.

This new rule set added to the games making it not only more competitive but more fun, some rules and parts of the game need a bit more testing and work but believe we are on the right track. Wont be long until we get a more structured test on the go and finally be confident with our work to move onto the digital p[project.

Thanks for reading folks we appreciate it ! :D

First Ever Playtest

Hello Readers,

After some discussion about the games board and tweaking a few minor details we were ready for our first test and run through of the game. We tested our initial ideas out and seen how they played out making the boardgame last a big too long as we both agreed on a new structure for the game.

We decided to make the game a bit more fast paced and believe many of the things discussed in our first play test will improve the player experience and make for a more competitive and exciting mobile game. Our next stage is to test out these new ideas to ensure they feel nice and playable before we try and test with an outside audience. Just another quick post tonight so stay tuned folks and thanks for reading ! :D

Constructing a Board

Hi guys, Kevin here, and I'm going to talk about the initial design of the game board.

Quite possibly the biggest task of developing a boardgame in its own right is the construction of the board. The board represents the map which contains the geography of the game, and is also the platform for telling the story of a board game.

Now, you'll probably be thinking "hold the phone, a story in a board game?" Well, if you look at anything from Risk or Talisman to Warhammer, these tell stories of what your pieces aim to do, even Chess has a story of an army trying to slay a King by getting past an army. The complexity of a board game's story can be furthered using your own imagination to add character.... but that's just for total nerds, right? (Go on, this is a safe place).

Anyway, to construct this board, I opted for the diamond shape instead of a square shape, because being able to move your units in one tile in any direction may be too plain on a traditional board. I created several copies of each board, and here is a screenshot of the one that I personally feel is best-suited to the game.

Now then, I know this image makes zero sense, it's just a mesh of colours and blocks. But, the colours have meaning in the design of the game rather than the board itself at this stage. What I will give away is the following:

• The board is symmetrical so that both players will have to cross the same environments in their journey
• The brown diamonds (those are brown, right?) will be where the player's units start off. A lot of discussion went into how long this row should be and whether or not the units should have an empty tile between each of them. We've settled on six here to keep the units centred on the board, not giving away too much space for movement to either side.
• The second row contains 7. I created two designs where this "six-width" board would have five on the second row (cutting off the two from the end), but I prefer this wider board because it encourages more free movement while still being small enough that contact between the units of the two players will be forced, initiating combat.
• The red row is what I call my baby, because this is where the no-man's land would be on the board, when a unit comes in, an "environmental shift" competitive event (possibly randomised) will take place that will decide whether that unit is forced to stay on their own side, or if they can cross over to enemy territory. This is a work in progress in finding the right use of these events and the gameplay of how these events will take place is something that will be looked at next week.

I'd like to tell you all of the colours, but then that would be telling, and everything at this stage is still subject to change as it is early days. But hopefully, you have a general idea of what may end up being the shape of the final board for our game.

All of this is to be discussed tomorrow night in our second team meeting (location TBD), where the final shape of the board should be decided before we begin to implement gameplay.

Thank you for reading, and good night from the Red Carpet!

Day 2

Hello all,

Not much has progressed tonight however work has begun on two provisional game boards each will be tested for optimal player experience. The main bulk of this development will commence tomorrow evening and hopefully once the board is finished we can work on improving the drafting and conflict mechanics of the game.

Pretty short post today but rest assured there will be more to come in the future and a lot more screen shots of where we are at when we get there :)

The First Encounter

Today marks the first meeting of "Red Carpet Games", and we are excited to share the first details of our product. We are developing a turn-based strategy game that draws inspiration from both standards set by traditional board games and classic arcade game paradigms.

Due to our game being designed from the ground up without using a template, we are having to design the mechanics from scratch on paper. As our game is turn-based and will be using a "game map", we will be implementing it as a board game first and foremost, and then including in AI and automation in order to port it to digital platforms.

Matters discussed in our first meeting include:

• The aim of the game is to get from one side of the map to the other
• A three-player idea was discussed, where a third player can control the environment and make the game harder or easier for two individual players.
• Combat system for when people land on the same slot on the board
• Discussion of map size, particularly width. We will be making two or three different board sizes in order to test the competitiveness of each one. We want to encourage free movement within the "game map" while restricting it enough to provide a challenge and forcing collision with both obstacles and other players
• Axes of player movement of the map has been discussed
• The map should be an exact mirror for all players, meaning they will have to cross the same obstacles and nobody will be at a disadvantage
• We aim to be playtesting the first draft of the game internally against each other by the end of March, and tweaking it from there.
• Once boardgame is complete, the digital version will be developed using Unity 5.

8-axis movement idea where player on black diamond can move 1 space in any direction

More updates in the coming days as development progresses. 

Thanks for reading and following,

The Red Carpet!

Introduction

Good evening, I would just like to take this initial post to introduce ourselves. We are "Red Carpet Games", and we are a team that currently consists of two creative people that want to improve our skills and get a foothold into the games industry. As University graduates, we have left our respective courses with some achievements, but what we left with most, was the desire to succeed, the desire to prove ourselves and create. Unfortunately, we have been unable as yet to find jobs within the industry that we love.

Therefore, we are taking it upon ourselves to create our own game experiences internally in order to gain the necessary experience and learn and grow with new technologies. This will ideally allow us to reach a place where we will have some substantial portfolio pieces to show potential employers and secure us full-time employment within the industry.

However, you never know, we might gain the success of a Cinderella story and manage to work self-employed, but that is not our main goal here... not yet anyway.

Our first project is beginning development immediately, and we will share any news, updates or development progress on here as it happens. So, please stay tuned as we appreciate any moral support you are willing to give.

Thank you and welcome to the Red Carpet!