M1 Master The Mole: An Augmented Boardgame Experience

Due to the time constraints of this project, our first and foremost goal was to create a working prototype to present at the end of the semester.

One of the most important next steps, now that we achieved that goal, is to make sure the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines are followed. While some features of the game offer great opportunities, e.g. the logged history of each game for which we could add an voice over for the visually impared, for others we will need the option to disable them if needed. One example for this is the pantomime minigame. All this should then be tested by experienced experts in accessibility testing.

Lock Picking

In the concept phase of our project we developed more ideas for minigames than those which made it to the final game. One of our favorite ideas was a team agility game using the phones’ gyroscopes. All players have to work together – everyone on their own device – to pick a lock. The players need to rotate their device, each controlling the position of one of the pins of a lock. The player that triggered the minigame then needs to rotate his/her device to slide a pick through the lock to open it - another way for the mole to hinder the team.

Would You Rather

Another minigame idea we would want to implement in the future is a game of trust and personal knowledge: In a version of the well known game ‘Would You Rather’ adapted to our theme, two players are randomly chosen and presented with two possible answers to an either-or question. One of the players needs to answer it, while the other player tries to guess which answer his team mate picked. Only if they agree, the game is won.

From the start of the project we tried to think about achieving a balanced game experience. Since players play not only against the ‘AI’ enemy chasing them but also against one of their own and both parties have additional different objectives to achieve, the chances to win depend on a lot of factors.

Although we played many test games, we will need to playtest the game a lot more ourselves and – even more importantly – with actual end users. To figure out a good balance between the dice rolling, finding and verifying clues,the overall chances for events to happen and the two parties to win, a lot more work needs to be put into adjusting the different settings and probabilities. A part of this will be adapting the games difficulty based on the number of players.

Since our enemy ‘AI’ is controlled by a program, it doesn’t have the same constraints as regular analog board games. They mostly have to rely either on generators of randomness in the real world like dice or cards, time intervals, or events in the game itself to control the ‘AI’ playing against the players.

In the future we want to look into creating a more intelligent enemy that e.g. adapts the difficulty based on the level and on the current state of the game. This way a gaming experience could be achieved which would never be too easy or too hard, adapting to the age, skill level and luck of the players in the current round, while still keeping enough of an element of chance and challenge to keep the game interesting.

Composing and producing enough music to underscore the whole game without getting repetitive and boring was not possible in the time frame of this project.

In the future this feature could be greatly improved with more content and more professionally produced adaptive music and sound effects to create a more exciting and immersive experience. Additionally, the technological possibilities of this feature are not yet fully exhausted: Real-time filters and other audio-effects could provide even more opportunities to make the musical backdrop more varied and exciting.