The pitch went worse than I was expecting, but at the same time made our game better. Our concept was broken, playing out our original game in my head was fun but there were a lot of scenarios that didn't work, most of our units were poorly balanced. The Volatile (now known as the Trojan) was too powerful, the Scout (Spyware) was only useful if there was a Volatile on the field, and the Soldier (Malware) was okay but felt like it would be the only unit being created.
The battle system was also broken, every time a unit was converted by the opponent's units then another of your unit(s) would convert the same opposing units because their health was low enough. This situation happened way too often and created the illusion of "success".
The game we have now is a lot more simplified and woks (more or less). We removed two of the five units and now only use the three upgraded units (Malware, Spyware, Trojan). Each unit can take out each other and they all move differently. The Trojan moves one space at a time but claims all tiles connected to the tile it lands on. Malware moves three spaces at a time and claims those three tiles. Spyware can move four spaces but only claims the last tile it lands on. I'm a little annoyed/paranoid about the Malware unit. After watching a quick play test on Thursday, between two people who have never played this game, I noticed that the Malware unit moved around two times the entire match. I think there could be more to this unit. Maybe if you have more than one Malware then after moving each of these units the space between each of them is claimed (probably a bit too over powered but it's an idea). I like the idea of keeping the maps small, it has the potential to shorten game play time and create more conflict between players.
About an hour before the pitch we had to alter most of our game. We kept the hexagon grid which, people liked, and the only three units that actually did something that helped the player reach the end goal. Surprisingly the pitch felt like it went better than my first one. I didn't feel more confident, I think it had to with the fact that everything I talked about I wrote an hour before. I'm not pleased with how the pitch went but I'm not annoyed either, I am content. Hopefully for the next prototype we won't have to rethink our game the day of the pitch. Now we are just getting the documentation done, There is a lot of detailing and images/diagrams we need to add so that if someone else was to make our game they would know exactly what to do.
Being leader of this group feels sort of natural... I'm not sure I'm doing it right. Everything seems to go pretty well when we are all communicating properly and the other guys come to me a lot with ideas and opinions which is something I'm not used to but having knowledge and experience as a team leader is required for my future career. Last week Steve mentioned that we should have some idea on what we want to do in the future so we can start working for it today. This is something I've thought about often and still can't make up my mind between two different career choices, so I'm going to work towards both, freelance concept artist and founder of a games company creating the next "World" (an MMORPG greater than WoW). So that's my plan, that is what I'm going to work towards.
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