This time in my CAGD class, I was placed into Group 13 and was tasked with making any game my partner and I wanted to make….sounds easy enough. However, the catch was that it had to have the theme of the scary, new Zika virus. Our target audience had to be for 30-40-year-olds, which was both good and bad. It allowed us to make our game more complex, but at the same time, it’s hard to have a complex game in a short timeframe. So, my partner and I thought for quite awhile. We just could not think of what to do, but then, we had it. Our game is titled Infector, an asymmetrical game about preventing the Zika virus that isn’t as easy as you think.
The game involves 3 “Good Guys” against a common enemy: The Infector. The Infector is also played by another player, and his turn is different from a regular player turn.
Each player, including the Infector, has their own set of action cards that they can use on their turn, granting them certain abilities like adding 5 to their roll, being able to use multiple cards in one turn, or even prevent a mosquito attack. The Infector’s job within this game is to prevent the players from opening his locked door where he is located, thus condemning him from spreading the virus to the rest of the world. His job is to infect the other players with all of the symptoms of his virus using his mosquito minions and his Abominations.
The players, along with their action cards, have special “ultimate” abilities that they can use when they have enough charges to use them. These are displayed by spinners that each player gets (except for the Infector) that get raised by one each time it is the player’s turn.
Overall, our game was well enjoyed by all of the playtesters that we had play it. Unfortunately, our first playtest did not go too well: our game was way too long, gameplay was really slow, some players were OP while others had no purpose, etc. Originally, we wanted to implement a timer into our game, so if the players didn’t unlock the door in time, they would lose. However, due to the game being much more strategic than we originally thought, we decided to scrap the idea of a timer since the game ended up going on for too long. Plus, the Infector was able to just screw the time up by taking their sweet time to do their turn, causing the Good Guys to have less time.
However, we were able to implement multiple Abomination types, allowing for more in-depth gameplay and ways things could happen, allowing for the Infector to infect players easily, and we also made it so if a key was taken from a player in a successful mosquito attack, that key would be returned to the nearest key room to that player. Also, once that mosquito has successfully taken away a key, it is no longer able to take any keys from any players.
All tasks within our group were completed on time and were very evenly spread among both of us. We each did around half of each assignment given to us, and each assignment was turned in on time. We also collaborated on the design of the board and pieces, as well as parts of gameplay.
Overall, I think our game is very good where it is right now, but it has a lot of potential to be a lot better. If we decide to continue work on this game, I’m sure we could easily perfect it. In the future, I hope to be able to meet up with my partner in person and playtest on our own time as that would allow us to fix more than we did. It was a fun project and by far one of my favorites so far.
