The Final cards:

External Description: The aim of this project was to facilitate play in the electronics classroom by making a game based on creating circuits with logic gates to solve challenges.

Play experience Image from Tabletop Prototyping Meetup:

Logic Cards is aimed at people 13+ wanting to learn about electronics in a fun way. This game teaches about logic gates and how to use them.

Reflective Statement:

This project had many challenges and problems, from complicated rules to the first player consistently winning. The game started as an electronic game and ended in a card game as it was easier with the time restraints and resources available. Through testing I made many iterations on the rules, adding things to make the game more fun to play as well as making it fair. One major problem was the first player winning 90% of the time. This was pointed out to me at the tabletop prototyping meetup that I attended and I solved it by adding a point based system rather than first to finish. To help make my game work I needed to do a lot of research on other games and what makes people enjoy a game. I learned many things through designing this game; not just about games but also the psychology of games and how they are played. as well as, what makes games enjoyable. If I were to do this project again I would start with research earlier, to get a better idea of the games already existing and how they work.

Play Experience:

The play experience starts a little complicated and the first few rounds are usually quite slow. However, after that, the game becomes very entertaining and fun at the same time as speeding up your arithmetic calculation speeds, spatial thinking, and problem-solving skills. During the initial learning of the game, the player’s knowledge of Logic Gates can go from 0 to being able to design a fairly complex circuit in a matter of rounds and each round that is played speeds up this process, training it like muscle memory. The player is sometimes frustrated at first when it seems complicated but once it is understood most people really enjoy the game.

Hero Image:

Twitter Friendly Tag-line:

Logic Cards is a card game designed to facilitate play in the electronics classroom; Making learning about logic gates fun.

Rules of play

Two to Four Players. Each player draws 5 logic cards at random and 1 challenge card. Logic cards are added to the Centre Piece, input to output. In each turn, you can place one card, skip a turn to discard hand or all of your cards on the board. Pick up a card from the deck each time you place a card on the board. you can only progress a number if you placed a card that turn. The aim of the game is to complete a binary sequence on the challenge card by adding logic gates. By adding a logic gate, it can change the output. At the end of each turn, you can choose whether to submit your value if you think it is correct, by pressing the send button. On completing a sequence, you move on to the next round by drawing another challenge card and adding up your points for that round. You can choose to wipe the board on completion or keep it if you can keep it for next round then you will get all the cards point added like normal. How to use each card is written on the cards. If you submit a value that is wrong the player who first spotted it gets 2 bonus points.

Here is a video of a round of the game:

https://youtu.be/F2F6P5ceXEg

Today I was still sick and didn’t make it to the studio but I did work on a pamphlet to explain how to play. It is laid out as a double-sided bi-fold pamphlet, which seems like a fairly common format for game instructions from games I have seen, for example, a deck of standard playing cards I purchased came with a bi-fold pamphlet with how to play blackjack. I also learned just today how to format a bi-fold pamphlet in word and the best writing style for game rules. I look at many examples of other game rules and instructions. What I found was the best writing style that was easy to read and read aloud was a present tense active voice in the second person. I also look at similar games to see how mine compared and found that putting some learning into the instructions would help learn the concepts and the game which I did(Understanding Binary and Logic Gates) I also gave real world examples.

I had a friend read through the pamphlet and they said it was easy to understand with some minor mistakes that I will need to fix tomorrow; such as grouping ideas better and laying it out more clearly, as well as, the possible addition of pictures to help break up the text to make it easier to read.

There is, however, a problem with the pamphlet; It goes over the 2056 character limit for the final submission. Therefore, I will need to make a shorter less descriptive version for the final blog post and remove the learning section. 

In Conclusion, today I made a pamphlet to explain how to play my game with some minor issues. However, this goes over the final submission character count and therefore, I need to make a shorter version for tomorrow. Also, I learned a lot about writing game instructions/rules as well as formatting in Word. Finally, Tomorrow I need to play test the game again to check that the game meets the brief. 

Today I got really sick and could not make it to the studio lecture. However, I still worked on the cards while at home in bed.

I finished editing the new cards and printed them out. I added Arrows and labels to the inputs and outputs to assist in learning to play the game. I also made a deck of challenge cards that had different sequences of binary numbers to create with bonus points if you do not use certain listed gates.I then cut all the cards out.

After that, I started working on the rules, also taking photos to make it easier to understand; which I plan to finish by tomorrow. There was, however, a printing error; all of the AND gate cards had an arrow misplaced leaving a gap where it should have been aligned (As seen as the blue filled arrow in the bottom left).

This shows that even though I thoroughly checked the layout before printing I missed something. Next time I know to look more critically and check for minor errors. I will reprint the AND gates tomorrow after working on the rules. The look of the cards is less important than the function.

In conclusion, I completed what I needed to get done today despite being sick except for a minor mistake in printing that I will fix if I get time to. I have a new modified deck (REV 2) and I have made a start at the rule booklet that I need to finish tomorrow.

I tested the addition of a point system and it seemed to solve my first player advantage problem. However, the number of points per each type of card needs to be adjusted. I like how the points add an uncertainty to the game as to who will win. Furthermore, I need to decide on how many points will be given per correct number and also whether there will be a deduction for more turns. I also need to Simplify the instructions and add challenge cards to simplify the setup process of the game; these cards could also have point bonuses on completion. in conclusion, the addition of points solved a huge problem in my game. However, it also raised some more problems.

The game now has a point system where each card is worth a different number of points; the harder to use cards have a higher point value than the easy ones adding strategy and hopefully solving my first player advantage problem. The current points per card are as follows: 

These values were decided based on both how many turns each card takes to achieve an outcome and how many different outcomes are possible as well as the complexity of a card. Cards that start as a One also have lower points as that is an advantage.

I attended a meetup last Saturday for testing tabletop games to see how my game (Logic Cards) performed with players that I didn't know. I discovered many flaws with the game such as the first player would always win, it was hard to understand and can be frustrating to keep track of gameplay. From this, I took lots of notes from what I observed and also things that were suggested or complained about. Furthermore, I tested playing variations of the game with adapted rules to discover how gameplay changed. In conclusion, my game needs redesigning to adapt to these problems.

I have decided not to make the cards into circuits as it is not practical for reproduction. From a marketing point of view, it would also be too pricey to reproduce without a large demand. Therefore I will continue developing Logic Cards as a card game for now. However, it could be a future adaptation of the game.