Game development assignment

At Monday in class we were given an assignment to learn about core experience. And to do that we was tasked with choosing a game of our own choice and then find out what that game’s core-experience were and duplicate that core-experience in a game that we were supposed to develop. And to stress us a little bit more we were supposed to have a playable prototype of that game the day after.

My group choose Left 4 dead as our game and after some discussion we came to the conclusion that the core experience of Left 4 dead is getting from point A to point B with your group, cooperating and shoot zombies with weapons that is found along the way. So, how do you make a paperbased game that has this core experience?

Our solution was to make a game that had a large board that you could go freely around in any direction you wanted. The goal of the board is to get from one corner to the other and one corner is the start and the other is the safe house. But to be able to get to the safe house you will need to get to the key in the middle. In order to get the feeling from Left 4 dead we also needed zombies.

We solved that problem by adding eventcards that you would have to draw every other turn that would tell the players what kind of zombie spawned, how many of them, from what direction and how far away they were. This will spawn many zombies over time so in order to help the players, they can make it to different locations on the board where they will get the chance to draw a rewardcard. These card will probably give the player a weapon or a healthkit that they can use to shoot zombies or heal their fellow players. But the stack also contains a few zombiecards that could spawn upon the player.

At the start of the game each player get a healthkit and a pistol in order to have something to fight of the zombies. The different kind of weapons that is available in the game is:

• Pistol
  • 2 dmg, 2 range
• Rifle
  • 4 dmg, 3 range
• Shotgun
  • 3 dmg, 1 range
• Sniper
  • 5 dmg, 5 range

We talked about having ammunition in the game just like in the real version but we agreed that it would be to much to keep track of. There is also a few different kind of zombies:

• Regular zombies
  • 2 HP, 2 dmg
• Tank
  • 15 HP, 6 dmg
• Smoker
  • 5 HP, 2 dmg
  • Draws the player towards him from 5 steps away.
• Hunter
  • 5 HP, 2 dmg
  • Fast, meaning it will get to roll the dice twice.

Down below is a pdf of our first concept board. The scan is not very good but it gives the idea of how the players will be able to move.

Gameboard

That is my thoughts about the assignment and the work my group managed to produce in one day.