Paper Prototype

For this week I will explain how my group went about converting our game into a paper prototype. Unfortunately for us, our game was not the easiest one to try and convert into paper. Since it was physics based, we found in challenging to translate that mechanic into paper form. At first we were going to have some kind of formula for the player to figure out how many spaces they have moved based on the speed. This method was much too complicated for the paper prototype. Fortunately, I feel we have found a perfect mechanic for the paper game, that captures the physics based mechanic. For the game board, we drew an outline of a type of level that would be in our game. We include some hazards such as sharp curves, crushers, exploding rocks and moving platforms. The track was then divided up into different sections, placing each section into its own zone. This is similar to how we divided up the computer games levels for the respawning. Each section has its own attributes associated with it. The attributes will explain what the player needs to roll in order to get past that part of the level. The player can choose “fast”, “medium”, or “slow”. If it is a curved piece, the attributes might be “fast = 4”, “medium = 2” and “slow = 1”. This means if the player wished to pass that part going fast, they must roll a 4 or higher. Failing to do so, means they must restart that section over again. 

Furthermore, for every roll the player makes they gain “time tiles”. They get three if they roll slow, two if they roll medium and one if they roll fast. This will incline the player to risk going fast, hoping that they do not fail as they will have to gain more time tiles. The player who gets to the end of the track with the least amount of time titles wins. I feel this accurately reflects the strategy of the real game as player can risk going fast, meaning they might require multiple attempts, or go slow, but waste a lot of time.