And They're Off!

Race to the Finish

In the first tutorial I met up with Jordon Mattison, Alex Golenischev and Sidd Panchal to play each of our Race to the Finish games.

First up was my game, University Life.

My game was University Life. A mix of Snakes and Ladders and The Game of Life. Players roll and collect or lose "Study points" as they land on spaces. They can also be fast tracked to spots further on the board. Players must earn enough Study points to complete and Tests they come across. They also must stop when they reach the midterm and final and add their study points to a roll. If they haven't collected enough Study points they are sent back to earn more.

Some problems I faced were when I decided to put in a massive fast track. This was a problem because Jordon is extremely lucky. He landed on the fast track to the final and failed once. Soon after he landed on the identical space and already had enough study points to pass the final. Winning in less than 10 turns.

Other than that, I realized that my game could use more spots where the players can gain Study points and less "Project squares" where players lose a turn. I would also lower the Study points needed to pass the midterm and final and get rid of the massive fast track that Jordon used to win.

Next up was Alex's game, F1 Racing.

Alex's game was a Formula 1 racer where players took turns at a very fast pace, each roll of the six sided dice could land you on an off ramp to a short cut, a square that had you move 5 or 10 on your next turn, an oil spill that made you lose a turn or a set of tools where the player rolls to see how many turns they lose.

This game would've been a lot easier to figure out if the board game board was bigger and had a legend of the icons on the side. Otherwise it was another very fun game that I lost.

Third was Sidd's game, Even or Odd.

Sidd's game one of the more confusing games of the day. But as we went along we began to understand the player switches and chance spaces and it quickly became a very fun game. The player switches would change each player's location with the person to their left so (as it happened a few times) the player in 1st might become 3rd, 2nd might become last, 3rd might become 2nd, and last would move to first.

The only real issue we found (after we recovered from the initial confusion), was when we came to splits in the path with and small "E" and "O" in the corners. (Seeing as this was the main design for the game "Even or Odd" it probably should have been more clearly defined). At these spots, depending on your roll (even or odd) you would follow one path or the other. The issue was, the letters did not match up to the path you were to take. Also because the paths were not clearly defined it was possible to get stuck in almost infinite loops.

We had some fun working out the right way to play this game and I ended up getting 2nd place (Thanks to a Player Swap!).

Finally Jordon's game, Battle Squares.

Battle squares was The kind of game you play once or twice without really understanding what's going on. There are many rules to the battling but it's an decent idea. I think it just needs some design work, maybe a quick guide to battling.

On the board there are 4 different colour squares, red, yellow, blue and the big green squares. Every player starts with 1 equipment card. Red squares give the player an equipment card, blue squares give the player effect cards to be played on their turn, yellow do nothing and green cards are the battle squares, you battle with another player that has landed on or passed the green square.

Players also have the ability to "save" their progress at the beginning of their turn in case they get into a battle and lose they wont have to return to the start.

As for battling itself it initially seemed like a lengthy process, but it gets easier as you play:


To battle, each player selects 1 equipment card, and put the others back down. You show each other the equipment card at the same time. In order to determine who wins:

1. Look at the Special conditions, if they are met as described, that card wins and the battle is over. If not...
2. If the attacker (player who initiated the fight) has a higher attack on their card than the defender has defense, the attacker wins.
3. If the attacker has less attack than the defender has defense, the defender wins.
4. The defender always wins in a tie.

At the end of the battle, the used equipment is discarded and shuffled back into the deck if and when you need more equipment cards.


This game is not hard to understand once you get into it. It just has a lot of rules and procedures to get used to very quickly.

All in all, I enjoyed our games, some need a bit of tweaking but that's what the play-testing is for. I would definitely be willing to play revised versions of these games anytime.