Game Chef – Done
Well Game Chef is over and my entry has been submitted. Below you will find links to the 3 stages of the writing process that I roughly go through with any game.
The first version is very rough and is mostly me spewing ideas onto a page with a lot of mechanical notes, thoughts and general scribbles as to the eventual shape of the game. What I would then usually do is produce a game from these notes and give it a playtest keeping the rules very rough but with the basic structure in place.
Once my first playtest is out of the way I write up the rules again this time with an eye to them actually being read by someone who isn’t in my head. During this draft I start to put in proper turn structures, timing rules and make sure to answer any questions raised by the initial playtest.
From then on it is rounds of playtesting and clarification until I get to the point where the game can be played by someone who isn’t me, who hasn’t played it before from the rules as written. I refer to this as blind playtesting which I think is a fairly commonly used term. This is a really important step and one, in my opinion, that far too many companies seem to leave out. Your game might be the best thing in the world when run by you, but if other people can’t replicate the experience from the rules as written then you have failed in your job as a designer.
The final stage of the rules for ‘From Order comes Chaos’ are still a while off but I hope that 0.2 is as clear as I can make it at the moment. Due to the nature of the time constraint I have had no time to playtest so at the moment the game is still very rough but the rules are hopefully understandable.
I am grateful for any feedback:
Initial Draft
Second Draft
Third Draft
Folder with the cards and rules in PDF form
Thanks
Iain
