Interaction Brief: Primary Research

To explore board games and card games a little more, I decided to go to a board game café and play a few games and assess them, the first game I played was called unstable unicorns.

Unstable Unicorns:

Unstable unicorns is a card game where you have to destroy your opponents before they collect the required amount of unicorns in their stable.

There were many points that could be improved upon that I realised whilst playing this game, these include:

• The game taking a rather long time to set up.
•  The rules weren't very clear, and made learning the game quite confusing.
•  Most games you play a few rounds and pick up the rules as you go, but even after a few rounds the rules were unclear and took a while to even understand slightly.
•  Because the rules are so vague and confusing, the game leaves a lot of room for house rules to be made.
• Each card has its own values and effects, making the game even more confusing.
• The game is primarily based on luck, as it depends on what cards you draw as to what moves you can make and how good them games are.

The main processes were drawing cards, and discarding cards, which after a little while could get boring, and repetitive. The game isn't really meaningful because the rules are so complicated that you cant really get emotionally invested in the game.

DreamWell

DreamWell had more good points than it did bad, although the bad point about it was still significant enough to assess and learn from.

Good things about DreamWell include:

• Thee rulebook is very in-depth, and shows examples of how to set the game up, and also examples of plays that can be made.
• There is both a simplified and advanced version of the game of which the player can pick based on skill level and if you are a new or advanced player.
• When the rules are clear, you realise it is a strategy based game, and every slight move you make effects something about the outcome of the game.

The only bad point I found was that the rulebook was almost too long, and took too long to read and understand, this means people with less of an attention span might get bored before even finishing reading the rules.

The repetitive actions again where drawing cards, and moving a game piece, what made it a little more meaningful than the previous game was the storyline that was attached to it. You were out to save your companions, and you feel like you have to do this, rather than just trying to collect unicorns in Unstable Unicorns.