For the first week of related works studies, I will look into three different board games. I especially chose the following games because each of them has a usability aspect that I think I can learn from
DISCLAIMER: I do not own any of the work
1. Go fish!
I would guess that most of us have played Go fish! with a group of friends before. But because there are so many variations of the game, I’m going to describe the one I’m most familiar with. The one thing you need is the standard 52 cards pack and more than 4 players. You will divide the players into teams of 2, sitting opposite to each other. Each player will receive 4 cards at the start of the game. Everybody gets the chance to swap cards with a pile of 4 cards that are put in the middle of the table. Whoever has 4 cards of the same deck (same Qs, same Ks, etc.) will need to alert their teammate. If your fellow team member manages to say "Go fish!" before everyone else, your team will win. But if the other teams manage to stop the process beforehand by screaming "Stop fish!" then they will win. The great thing about Go fish! is that the game demonstrates learnability and memorability very well. This means the rule of the game is very easy to learn and memorize. The simple nature of the game makes it one of the most popular choices for warm-up among friend groups in the board game world
2. The Resistance: Coup
The Resistance Coup is an example of a board game in which you need to eliminate all the other players to win. The game has a much more complex mechanic than Go fish! so it is going to be much harder for me to explain the game in detail. I will try to explain the important points and link a video here if you are interested. First, you will need a group of 2-6 players. Starting the game, each player will receive 2 character cards from a pile of 15. The characters include: Duke, Ambassador, Captain, Assassin and Contessa, each of them possesses some unique abilities. The other important thing is the resources - the coins, which you can use to attack the other players. The last player who still has at least 1 card will win. The one thing that interests me about this game is how the creators choose to convey the gameplay through a small cheat sheet that each player will hold. On the small card, there will be information about each character's power and the number of coins you need to open strikes. This way, it is easy for users to get a hang of what is going on in the game
3. Sheriff of Nottingham
Sheriff of Nottingham is a game where users need to build up a strategy and win the best score as possible. Just like The Resistant, Sheriff of Nottingham is also a game with rich gameplay and mechanic, so I will also leave a how to play video if anybody wants to take a deeper look. The game is designed to play among a group of 3-5 people and may take up to 60 minutes of playtime. In this universe, players will take up the role of merchants in a small village, doing what merchants do. There will be 2 types of good: the legal one and the illegal one. Just like in real life, illegal goods will give you a much larger profit. But don’t think you can just stack up as many things as possible and get rich easily because there will be a sheriff (that players will take turns to play) looking out for you. It will depend on him whether he will let you through or charge you a large amount for trying to sneak in illicit good. At the end of the game, the winner will be the one with the largest points, which was written on the cards of the goods. Previously, I have talked about The Resistance and how they use a cheat sheet to convey the gameplay. In Sheriff of Nottingham, the information is delivered through colors (red for illegal, green for legal) and icons (the price of the goods). It is another way creators use to help users understand and get through the game
