Reflection of Atelier Weekly Challenge 2 ||| Documentation of Challenge 1

Have you ever experienced the feeling where you aim for one particular goal, put your whole mind, effort and hard work into scheduling, planning, and executing it, only for it to have that goal obliterated through the ridiculous bureaucracy that is the marking scheme and feeling upset that one slight fraction has completely ruined your chances. A slip that you yourself weren't aware about, a slip someone points out, a slip that basically screws you over despite the intensive planning that went along with it.

It brings to realize the slight flaw that unless someone {myself I guess} had recorded myself throughout that entire past 6-7 days from getting from A. to B., that no one will understand the work that went behind it all.

However, it is true. This is a competition. People are bringing their best effort to create something professional within a week. I strived for an achievement not based on playability, but on the amount of "keywords" I used as I'm not strong on making a super amazing game, but rather justifying a chunk of cards and keeping a checklist to make sure I incorporated every single one of those damn cards.
Of course, in all the irony ever to exist in the fucking planet, the cards failed me. I failed myself for not realizing "the cards go in the certain direction" or more specifically I am only allowed to use 1 "about" card.
It's sad that me not knowing that yet doing all those things swiped my victory and left me with a lower mark overall.
I dislike the stress I have over this course because I just want to do a damn well good and little shit like this is what stops me from getting a good mark.
I have yet to demonstrate my game. But from there, I can list the few things I've learned.

1. The cards count a million bajillion times more than I can ever imagine my mark scheme getting affected
2. Never leave documentation for the last minute. If you write on rough paper, just re--write/paste it in your sketchbook and most importantly, it's best to document your current work on a daily basis (for myself anyways) than gathering it all last minute.
3. Plan play-testing ahead of time. I only discovered on Monday that for an urban game like mine, I would need to actually demo the game. After a few moments of freaking the fuck out I managed to get someone who could other people to playtest/demo my game. Luckily on Wednesday a few could playtest it (Thanks B and C!) but you can never guarantuee the flakiness of people. So plan that ahead, and that being said play-testing really is crucial.
4. I guess this is just for myself but for a game (a game within a game???) this brought me down hard, as I mentioned earlier. I can't really bring myself to a low level, but at the same time, how much do I have to work, put time and effort towards things, plan ahead, etc. etc. to get a good score? The point deduction doesn't help because now I'm at a negative number so do I fail this course? I have 6 points (minus 6 or 7 so really 0) and maybe it's just me but this unicoin is killing me due to the face that these are marks and I am failing because of the little things that unfrotunately destroy everything for me. Yes, I care about doing well. Yes, I am aware of my strengths and weaknesses thereby planning ahead and strategizing on how I can get a high mark. On top of that is balancing all the other workload and making sure I don't go crazy and become bald by the end of this semester (some people go grey, I lose chunks of my hair)

Okay so the forth one wasn't really anything BUT onwards to the first challenge!!

The first challenge was a group. Let me go ahead with this lovely bear

first Confession Bear meme! I'm surprised I haven't made thousands of more of these...

It could be because of my quiet/awkward/introvertedness...but I really can't! I either get pushed by the wayside/not taken seriously, perceived as too weak to do anything or end up having to do everything. I think I've experienced all three every single time.
The only time I can think of a super successful group project was one friend who was always in charge of creating the final product (in a Powerpoint let's say) but made sure everyone had a section to work on and present on. I always did well with that friend (sadly..she is studying Health Sciences..le sigh {and obviously...she is super freakin' smart!})
Anywho the innovation our group had was really great and I decided to take on the design aspect of it.
However, as it is with groups, each person has their own opinion and direction as to where to take things and I personally think that's how we faltered a bit.
From tiny things to completely changing the size of the game (from fitting a scattegories box into something 10 times bigger than that) to having the rules changed last minute without many people's consent and thorough play-testing after those changes (at least between the group members) would've affected that. HOWEVER, I think we did very well for the first challenge we had and I am happy with that.

I unfortunately did not document much however here is our game, and some rough notes on my design aspects.

Original Concept of game.

Final product of game.

Final product.

Concept of board game cover.