Post 2: Pilots' Last Stand

In Pilot’s Last Stand, players play as pilots who must defend earth together against an evil villain's nuclear attack in an attempt to take over the world. In order to save the day, players shoot at the nuclear missiles (targets) to destroy them. If players destroy all the nukes before time runs out then the players win. If not, then the villain wins.

The game I made this time was Pilots' Last Stand with Ricardo Vargas. We decided to make a more interesting type of game by making a nuclear nonproliferation game geared towards children between the ages of 7 and 12. We thought attempting this might be a bit more challenging while also being fun.

We didn't have any issues completing tasks. We worked together on making all aspects of the game and completed just about all of our tasks early. This helped a lot because it made it so we were able to work on our game more in class and even future assignments if needed.

We encountered a number of problems such as not being able to view our Rule Sheet via Google Docs during one of our playtests and me being out of town for one of our playtests. We got the rule sheet to work eventually, but still don't know why it stopped working other than maybe an issue with wifi. As for me being out of town, we had our own playtest early in class and even managed to playtest outside of class.

During playtesting most of feedback was that players enjoyed the game because it wasn't a board game and that it was different. We asked what people thought of our game being a nuclear nonproliferation game geared towards kids to get mixed results that were mostly positive. Some thought the theme would be too intense for children. Others thought it would be fun for them regardless and that the theme would go over their heads. Kids wouldn't be thinking of nukes, but more about saving the world and being somewhat like a superhero. Another critique that we got was that there wasn't enough event cards and that we needed more variety. We got a lot of ideas for events such as a nuke coming back that was already destroyed or a 6th nuke appearing out of nowhere. Someone said they liked the Dirty Windshield idea where the players vision gets blocked, but stated it might be better to do digitally versus physically. Since we were in a classroom with other playtesting students we had to let people know we would be throwing projectiles. Even when warning people they were in the firing zone some said they didn't mind so we had to do our best to mind our surroundings.

Going forward I would definitely like to focus on more event cards. If I were to do more playtesting instead of trying to simulate an entire game I'd probably just want to try playtesting a single mechanic. I already know shooting in a game works so we don't need to test that. Events and how players will react to them is something that might be better to focus on.