Trains are cool and good.
This is the thesis of my bagatelle design, which, among others, was played on Tuesday last week. I had wished to have more theming, as I thought the playtest was more of a test of design rather than aesthetic, but c’est la vie.
I had a lot of fun assembling the PinBox 3000. I found the process almost therapeutic. Punching out pieces, folding the cardboard, sticking them together, it was very easy to follow and felt near painless to get the thing together. As for the design of the board, I wanted to take the theme of “train” and implement it on the board. The station peg at the top is what the player is aiming for, if you hit it, it’s easy to go down the different “tracks” that have the different pockets for scoring. An easy to follow metaphor, it adds a bit of level design and depth to the simplistic gameplay.
As for feedback I got on the design:
Theme
People seemed to like the theme, verbally people told me they liked how the theme meshed with the design a bit. They also quipped my quip about “Trains are cool and good”. It seemed though the art wasn’t as developed as I had wanted people were still able to connect it with the theme.
Implementation of theme and features
People really liked the implementation, with someone nearly directly quoting how I intended that it was cool how I had implemented the “station” into the game. The fact I expected the player to be a bit nuanced with the launcher was noted.
Playability
The reaction was a bit mixed, some said that the shots were satisfying and I had a good eye for placing them. Others commented that it was way too easy to gutter the ball, which was true.
What you’d do differently
I’d like to have made the art more developed. That would have added a lot to the game and the train theming, though I’m glad that the theme wasn’t lost on people.
I got all of the push pins and poster board for my machine from the office supplies in the MAGIC Center.