Mixt

2ND SEMESTER UNIVERSITY PROJECT

ROLE: DESIGNER
SUMMER - 2021

My responsibilities:

System Design - Designed rules and game flow
Problem Solving - Numerical balance and play test
Communication (Written) - Wrote design docs
Communication (Verbal) - Weekly stand-ups, meetings

A 20 mins gameplay presentation {Placeholder}

Mixt is a collaborative hot seat card game/engine-builder where 2 players work together to build a floating engine-driven city/ship which blends UK and China influenced Steampunk structures to escape the toxic fog which is growing on the planet. Mixt is currently in active development, and will enter Beta on the 3rd of August. A 20 minute vertical slice will be ready at the end of August, and present to our tutors.

The rules and flow

The initial concept of Mixt was inspired by Wingspan. As a designer, I contributed concepts and ideas of core systems and rules based on the solid board game structure of Wingspan. To better convey the simplified game rules and flow to our programmers visually and logically, I wrote several design documents and flow chart on Miro in our designers team.

Game Flow Chart for Mixt on Miro - Final Verson

Game Streamline and Simplificaton

Game Representation of Wingspan and Mixt for analysis

Refining the rules and simplifying the mechanics are the most challenging aspects of the game from a design standpoint in the Alpha stage. To help our designers better understand the main flow and complexity of our game rules, I borrowed the idea of gameplay representation analysis from Liamascape Games and created a gameplay comparison between Wingspan and Mixt to clarify design direction and vision to our team.

Specifically, in response to the social and cooperative experience highlighted in the brief, I designed the exchange system where players are able to give and receive cards from different cultural regions. This was developed to the core strategy that players are able to use for achieving the goal.

Game Balance and Playtest

I was specifically responsible for the numarical balance and playtest sessions of Mixt, including card effects testing, game flow testing, progress testing.

Playtest MVP: Organized designers to test and define rules, game flow and progress
Playtest Alpha: Organized 3 playtest sessions for simplification and game balance
Card balance: Tested and balanced (36) card effects and Gain value of each type of card
Progress balance: Tested and balanced the difficulty based on the Turn-Fog progress

Click the right button to download the design Doc I made for the project

Playtest Document for recording the process

Balanced Card List including Ordinary A-H, Rare I-Q

Toxic Fog Progress Bar_gif {Placeholder}

Game Progression

In response to the tutor's feedback that the progress and goal of the game is unclear, I designed and developed the progress bar to help players visually communicate with the game progress to promote players' decision-making and strategy in the game

Feedback and Evaluation

In this section, I am going to conclude some evaluation and feedback for this project from tutors and peers. MORE in-game screenshots will be shown at the sliding window below.