9/12/12

     The name of our card game is Shop Til' You Drop. The concept of the game is, as stated in the title, general shopping. Each player is “shopping” for a variety of items on a mutual budget. The first player to achieve spending all of their budget money is the winner of the game. There are three different piles of cards; cash cards, budget cards, and the item cards. The budget cards are what determine the budget for that game for every player. The items cards will be the items players are attempting to purchase in the game. The cash cards are cards with dollar values that players will be purchasing the items on the item cards with. Some cash cards will have "special offers and coupons" that will help players get ahead in the game. 
     We chose this game over the other games because we felt it had the most replay ability, very little downtime, and had the perfect amount of randomness and chaos to keep the game interesting, yet light and simple. Mike's card game about matching the country to it's correct continent was too simple and did not have much replay ability once the players caught on to where all the countries were located. Christian's game about trying to avoid sinking your boat had a great concept, but too chaotic to be a game you could relax and enjoy. Jeff's game about being a high school student trying to reach a particular goal had a great theme, but the mechanics would have required too much downtime. Therefore, we chose Shop Til' You Drop. 
     Today we discussed how we could change and improve on some aspects of the game. The parameters of the game are that a player can only win if he or she spends the EXACT budget; no more, no less. If a player has a five hundred dollar budget, and the player has "spent" four hundred and eighty dollars, the player cannot buy an item for twenty-five and must pass on buying that item. We have also decided to add more actions to the cash cards to improve on the variability and randomness of the game, such as percentage discounts (50% off) and money off ($10 off) on items. We also discussed adding actions that would hinder a player's performance in the game, such as trading items, or having to give your item cards to other players for holidays or birthdays. Hopefully we can evaluate and elaborate on these suggestions more next week!