Basic Description: The board game me and my partner created was a mix of card games with a dash of resource-gathering. The game would involve players being dealt a hand of cards that they can exchange on their turn for resources based on the card's value in poker terms. These resources include or can be turned in for, apples with the goal of having the most apples once all are gone.
Mechanics: Victory point as a resource, Random production, Betting and bluffing, Set collection
Play Log:
Session 1: Our first session was primarily us putting the game together for the first time and had a lot of confusion about what game we wanted to make. After getting some help from the professor we threw the idea of card game and resource gathering together until we got the general idea of the board game we have now. That version played fine but we had an issue with one player would win prematurely by getting a majority of the apples before the game was finished. We also had the issue of games ending too quickly so we remedied both of those by introducing joker cards that can steal a resource from another player as well as increasing the overall amount of resources to increase game time.
Session 2: This next play session was done at home with my family and allowed for a fresh perspective on issues in my game. One issue spotted was having too many players would drag the game out for too long so we added a cap of 4 players maximum to maintain solid pacing. Another issue was with the cards as players kept on placing 2 suits and the occasional pair as that was all they were getting in their hand. I fixed that issue by increasing the amount of cards per hand from 5 to 7 and that greatly improved play with more room for strategy and allowing better hands to show up more often.
Session 3: This play session was played back at school with another partner. The gameplay during this session was pretty solid and refined but there was still an issue with card hands still being fairly weak. We suggested getting a new hand after every turn but that was too tedious for normal play to be tested but looking back on things the idea of being able to exchange trash cards at the cost of no resources may be a good idea to test if there are more playtest sessions.