*Before reading, please check the project Dark Winter here.

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It's difficult to analyze your own game, because as a designer, you can see deep enough to reach the essence and purpose of the design, but you can't see comprehensive enough from every perspective (that's why we need playtest when designing games). Therefore, this analysis is more about how I design this board game, specifically, my understanding of the theme and design goals.

 

1.“We are all in this together”

Two key points that can be extracted about this theme are "in this" and "all together". "In this" means that the game needs environment element, and the core gameplay needs dynamic environment as the basis, so the gameplay can't just only be the interaction between players. We can give players the perception of "in this" through the attributes of the environment and the interaction and correlation between players and the environment. "All together" means that the gameplay of all players must be relevant and consistent, so I decided to produce the relevance and consistency among players by shared status or resources and unified game goals. After the above analysis, I defined part of the design goal of my game: make survival and cooperation as keynotes of the game dynamics.

 

2. Inspiration and experience as design goals

As for the backstory of the survival game, I am inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic that we are all experiencing now. In 2001, there was a real exercise on emergency response to the pandemic of deadly infectious diseases -- Operation Dark Winter. This operation reflects that our society will collapse rapidly under the attack of highly infectious and deadly virus, and the shortage of resources will make our social environment rapidly collapse into chaos.

 

Therefore, as survivors living in the environment of social collapse caused by the pandemic, the player has to face the difficulties of survival, how to make choices in dilemmas and the test of human nature. These experiences become design goals.

 

3. Game system and mechanics

Positive feedback:

In the design of the core mechanics of the game, I choose to use positive feedback as the basic drive, that is, the situation of the game will continue to enlarge in a direction in the loop. In my game, the ability of players to gain resources comes from the character status, and the recovery of the character status needs to consume resources. With some additional resource consumption and status deterioration, the game process will eventually go in a bad direction: specifically, in the later stage, the players' resources become less and less, resulting in the status getting worse, and the poor status makes the players unable to gain resources, resulting in the end of the game. At the same time, the basic mechanics of positive feedback will gradually enlarge the effect of players' decision. This creates a sense of oppression of survival and a strong feedback on the player's own behavior.

 

Resource and status sharing

The design of resource sharing is an important part of players' perception of the environment and experience of "together". The players need to maintain and use the shared resources in the game, which delivers the consistency of the game goals and motivations of the players, as well as the environment-oriented interaction. Status sharing specifically includes house damage and disinfection. The status of the house will significantly affect the players status in gameplay, and many positive effects will be applied to other players at the same time when the player carries out house activities, which give players experience of cooperative gameplay and the concept of win-win among players.

 

Emotional experience by some details of small mechanics

In addition to the main game mechanics that drive the game, some small mechanics and options designed for some specific game situations can provide dramatic game dynamics, enrich the content of the game and deliver impressive game experience.

 

For example, riot attack at night is a mechanic with great potential impact. When players take risks and don't reserve stamina to deal with riot attack, they will lose a lot of resources, which will suddenly interrupt the continuity of the game and give players great emotional strike with frustration.

 

Another example is that in the later stage of the game, players are in a positive feedback cycle of accelerated deterioration, and they need additional resources to save themselves from the bad situation of almost the end of the game. Suicide to sacrifice provide such an option. After the character dies, he will provide a lot of food (from his dead body) for other players. The mechanics of extending the survival time of other characters with the cost of one character's death and one player quitting from the game, makes players fall into the ethical dilemma of " the trolley problem".

 

These small mechanics may play a more significant role in providing emotional experience than the core mechanics.