How does a game is made (well, by my way)??

Yes, I am back. This is the second article on how does a game is made? After you plan out your idea, you should start constructing your first prototype. Prototype is like a experimental verison of the real thing.I made about 15-20 version of prototypes before I got my Office 21 published. Ya! 20 different one for a small card game. I can still remember on messy card layout, wording and game language problem. These are all things that I have learned after my first game.
Here are some photos about the evolution of Office 21.

  Something like Prototype 6

      Prototype 11+

Making prototypes are essential, and sometimes make you think the question of "why are there so many components in this game?"  There are several things that I think are important when making prototypes.

First Prototype
Print or draw even something really rough for your first one. you will throw them into the bin less then a day sometimes, because you will find a problem or wt so ever.

2-10th prototypes
This depends on how many variables and how many times you test the game. If you do a lot of play testing and many minor changes in your game. You will produce more prototypes. At this stage, your prototypes need to be playable and maybe with some image from Google or painter will do the job.

11+ prototypes
This is getting close to the finish line and the prototype here has to be "good" if not "great" quality. it should have meaningful artwork, player's aid, a small tuck box for you to carry around and open it up when you show it to the others. At this stage, you should even be proud of yourself, since you have made something and you continue to do so for quite a while now. At the end of this stage, professional artwork shall come in.
This will likely be the final version of the artwork and as close to the final production as possible.

The route of building a game is not as easy as people thought. In my first game, my mom always ask me about the status of my game. Is it finish?, What?! you are still changing things in the game? or What?! The art works has to be re-done? blablabla~ etc.

Making a game is not easy, is like writing a novel or a script. by play testing, we try to see is there any problems or unnecessary parts in the game. We can not afford a game that has a problem therefore we play test them all the time.

Last few days, my colleagues propose a game idea and we did test the game out. It was a  bluffing game with teams. I am now working on the illustration and prototypes for him. This is like the 2nd prototypes, which means still at least 10 copies still to go.
Let me show you about it:

The game is likely to be published in April (ENG version) too. 

Next Time, We will leave the game making topic for a few times and will focus on the other stuff!

See YA!

How does a game is made (well, by my way)?

There are like tonnes of game out there now, no matter is apps, online games or board games.
Here, we are looking at how does a table game is made! I specifically stated by my way, because there are many other way or you might start the game from a different point. You will see what I mean.

1. The base of the game

Theme based

This is usually where I start, from my view, a game has to be thematically strong rather then a paste up theme at a later stage. I will start by looking at newspaper, magazines, even ads on the street to get some ideas. For example, during the sale seasons, women are so into the discount and shopping. This can be a unique theme since shop to drop is not yet been done.
I love games that have themes that can happen in real life, even the chance is small but it is still realistic. 

Type of the game

This is a bigger category I think if you want to compare it with the theme based game. mechanisms, difficulties, age group, length...etc these are actually semi-related with each other.
The sheep roulette that I have tried to design is a game starts from the mechanism, where I am trying to make a roulette with less luck involved.

Office 21 sits somewhere between base and theme, I have designed a game called 21x21 before I go into the boardgame design, it is a game with 21 cards and you try to play blackjack aganist the other player.  The theme does actually comes from the situation where people graduated from university are really hard to get a job in Taiwan. This is where the theme brainstorming begins. 

The game of Office 21 does influence by a bit from the Love Letter from Seiji Kanai, where cards is condensed to be both points and special abilities. I have share this with him and glad he like this game when he is in Taiwan last year.  Black Jack without money is a boring game, so this is where the game does actually starts to grow.

Gold Rush is my second game, the game is actually a big mix of my previous prototypes, including roulette, slots and poker hand. and yes, they are all elements from casinos. 
This is one of my goal, if the casino is not for gambling, means no stakes or money is on the table, how can the casino game to be as fun as it should be. Gold Rush borrows the idea of poker where you draft 5 cards and try to be rich or poor at different situation.

I think this is a rather long one this week, I will catch up soon and continues on how does the prototypes are made and the next step.

Moreover, it seems there are quite a lot of people want to join the game design. I am not a professional, and only published my first game, but my one word advice is to read more, play more and enjoy more before you actually starts designing.