CTIN 482 Designing Online Multiplayer Game Environments

Jerry's Initial Game Design Proposal

Conceiving a new game was more difficult than I thought. When I started thinking about the games I enjoyed playing (mainly Grand Theft Auto and FPS), I realized that even if I thought of some interesting way of altering the game play of those types of games, it would be too difficult to design within the timeframe of this class. So I began looking into classic board games and ways of updating them on the computer. I came up with an idea of creating a computer game based on Scrabble.

The concept I am proposing is a fast-paced, competitive spelling game. The objective of the game is to be the player with the highest point total when the time reaches zero. Players gain points by spelling words from a selection of lettered tiles available to them on their side of the board, a 6x6 grid of tiles. Each tile has a corresponding point-value, which I will probably steal from Scrabble.

The game space would be set up as a grid of lettered tiles, currently 6x6. My initial design is for two players. Each player is assigned two adjacent sides of the grid. These will be the tiles available to them for forming words. As you can see in the diagram, there are two positions on the grid that are not exclusively one player or the other. The tiles at those two vertices will be available to both players. The interesting thing is that no tile on your side of the board is really safe. When your opponent pulls a tile off the grid on his side of the board, it pulls all the remaining tiles in that row or column towards him; thus, one of your own tiles will be lost. A new tile will fill that gap in the grid which may or may not help you. This will form an interesting relationship between the player and his opponent. By taking a tile off the board, you are also providing your opponent with a new tile. If a player cannot form a word from the letters available to him, then he may wait for his opponent to take a letter off the board.

When a player has pulled enough tiles off the board to form a word, he can press the WORD button to enter it into his list. The program will automatically verify that the entry is indeed a word and, if so, update that player’s point total accordingly. If the entry is not a word, then the sum of the points from the word will be deducted from the player’s total. The way the game is structured, it would most definitely need to be an electronic game because tiles need to constantly be refilled and points need to be recalculated.

This seems like it would be an interesting game to play. I would need to experiment with the size of the board to maximize fun. It would also be interesting to see if the game could be played with three or four players. How would that change the social dynamics? With four players, each player would have an influence on the other three but particularly the player directly opposite him or her. How would four players be able to play on one computer? Joysticks? Networked computers? These are all questions that will need to be answered.

===================================
PLAYTEST NOTES:

This was the first time I had ever used Flash to design a game. One of the biggest challenges was calibrating the keyboard input because it was being too responsive. But I managed to solve the problem this week and playtested it a couple of days ago on some friends.

Both players picked up the basic controls fairly quickly and were able to concentrate on the game within a few seconds. After they got oriented to the gameplay and objective, they immediately started putting words together. Oftentimes, a player would be spelling out a long word only to have his opponent pull a needed letter away from him. They both quickly learned that shorter words were safer than longer ones. Both players used the same keyboard to play the game, so it forced them to play side-by-side. This created an interesting dynamic between the two of them, especially when one player's actions had an affect on his opponent's choice of letters. Whenever an opponent stole a letter a player was about to use, the player would let his opponent know it. This game has two aspects of time-based excitement: one of beating the clock and another of rushing to grab a letter before one's opponent makes it unavailable.

My friends really enjoyed the game. They're only complaint was the keyboard interface. One complaint was the need to move two increments to align their marker on a tile. I implemented a two-move increment to slow down the responsiveness of the keyboard, but it ended up being more of a pain to make sure the marker was completely over the tile. Another complaint or suggestion was the directional keys. I only have two directional keys: left and right. But because you can also move up and down the grid, one player would sometimes press the UP key in hopes of moving up. He did say, however, that it was probably something he could adapt to with more play.

Another thing I have to consider after playtesting the game is the size of the board. I currently have it set as a 7x7-tiled grid, giving each player 13 available tiles from which to form a word. That might be a bit too big because I often see two of the same letters available. It would be interesting to see how much more competitive the game would be if the grid were smaller. Then, players would experience the loss of a needed tile more frequently. It will also be interesting to see how introducing "power-up" tiles will influence the playing of the game.

Jerry's Initial Game Design Proposal

Conceiving a new game was more difficult than I thought. When I started thinking about the games I enjoyed playing (mainly Grand Theft Auto and FPS), I realized that even if I thought of some interesting way of altering the game play of those types of games, it would be too difficult to design within the timeframe of this class. So I began looking into classic board games and ways of updating them on the computer. I came up with an idea of creating a computer game based on Scrabble.

The concept I am proposing is a fast-paced, competitive spelling game. The objective of the game is to be the player with the highest point total when the time reaches zero. Players gain points by spelling words from a selection of lettered tiles available to them on their side of the board, a 6x6 grid of tiles. Each tile has a corresponding point-value, which I will probably steal from Scrabble.

The game space would be set up as a grid of lettered tiles, currently 6x6. My initial design is for two players. Each player is assigned two adjacent sides of the grid. These will be the tiles available to them for forming words. As you can see in the diagram, there are two positions on the grid that are not exclusively one player or the other. The tiles at those two vertices will be available to both players. The interesting thing is that no tile on your side of the board is really safe. When your opponent pulls a tile off the grid on his side of the board, it pulls all the remaining tiles in that row or column towards him; thus, one of your own tiles will be lost. A new tile will fill that gap in the grid which may or may not help you. This will form an interesting relationship between the player and his opponent. By taking a tile off the board, you are also providing your opponent with a new tile. If a player cannot form a word from the letters available to him, then he may wait for his opponent to take a letter off the board.

When a player has pulled enough tiles off the board to form a word, he can press the WORD button to enter it into his list. The program will automatically verify that the entry is indeed a word and, if so, update that player’s point total accordingly. If the entry is not a word, then the sum of the points from the word will be deducted from the player’s total. The way the game is structured, it would most definitely need to be an electronic game because tiles need to constantly be refilled and points need to be recalculated.

This seems like it would be an interesting game to play. I would need to experiment with the size of the board to maximize fun. It would also be interesting to see if the game could be played with three or four players. How would that change the social dynamics? With four players, each player would have an influence on the other three but particularly the player directly opposite him or her. How would four players be able to play on one computer? Joysticks? Networked computers? These are all questions that will need to be answered.

===================================
PLAYTEST NOTES:

This was the first time I had ever used Flash to design a game. One of the biggest challenges was calibrating the keyboard input because it was being too responsive. But I managed to solve the problem this week and playtested it a couple of days ago on some friends.

Both players picked up the basic controls fairly quickly and were able to concentrate on the game within a few seconds. After they got oriented to the gameplay and objective, they immediately started putting words together. Oftentimes, a player would be spelling out a long word only to have his opponent pull a needed letter away from him. They both quickly learned that shorter words were safer than longer ones. Both players used the same keyboard to play the game, so it forced them to play side-by-side. This created an interesting dynamic between the two of them, especially when one player's actions had an affect on his opponent's choice of letters. Whenever an opponent stole a letter a player was about to use, the player would let his opponent know it. This game has two aspects of time-based excitement: one of beating the clock and another of rushing to grab a letter before one's opponent makes it unavailable.

My friends really enjoyed the game. They're only complaint was the keyboard interface. One complaint was the need to move two increments to align their marker on a tile. I implemented a two-move increment to slow down the responsiveness of the keyboard, but it ended up being more of a pain to make sure the marker was completely over the tile. Another complaint or suggestion was the directional keys. I only have two directional keys: left and right. But because you can also move up and down the grid, one player would sometimes press the UP key in hopes of moving up. He did say, however, that it was probably something he could adapt to with more play.

Another thing I have to consider after playtesting the game is the size of the board. I currently have it set as a 7x7-tiled grid, giving each player 13 available tiles from which to form a word. That might be a bit too big because I often see two of the same letters available. It would be interesting to see how much more competitive the game would be if the grid were smaller. Then, players would experience the loss of a needed tile more frequently. It will also be interesting to see how introducing "power-up" tiles will influence the playing of the game.

PROJECT PITCH:
My favorite types of games are two person fighter games, ala DOA2, Soul Calibur, and the likes. I want to create a fighter game that is a 3-D world. You would view your character in third person mode to make the world more interactive. My biggest problems with games like DOA2 is the inability to retreat when you are getting behind, to be able to regroup and restratigize. With a 3-D world, you would have the ability to turn around and run away. The world would be interactive: you can hide behind things and you can pick up certain items in the game that can be used to throw at the other person.

Actual "winnings" would be achieved in this game. When playing against the computer, a preset wager is already made. But if you played with a friend (who could bring over his own memory card), you could wager any amount of money you wished. This money that you win would be used in game to buy clothes, weapons, unlock moves, or unlock characters. That way you would be able to custom dress your fighter. Only certain weapons could be unlocked with certain characters and each character would have their own special moves.

GAME TEST:
My game test went horribly wrong. With all my friends gone for Spring Break or working, the only people I could get to play were my parents. Unfortunately, they do not quite understand the meaning of "hit points." We never even got to finish the game because they were generally confused the entire time and really didn't seem willingly to play the whole thing through anyways. I created a paper game very much based on the one in the reading with minor tweaks. I personally think it could work, but I wasn't able to play it with people who were ready to play a board game. So at this point, I have absolutely no idea whether or not my prototype actually works.

A few problems did quickly arise with it however and I think it has been solved. I originally had a limited number of cards that could be used, but it then became pretty obvious that the cards were going to run out. So I now only have one of each card and you can continue to reuse it. Also, I have weapons and moves that you can win from a certain place on the board and I now see that those should only be used once, not numerous times. Other then that, we didn't get very far. I still plan on game testing this paper version with some gamer friends once they become lazy and stop going to their jobs.

Sorry about the double-post above!

Thought people might be interested in this site I found a few weeks ago after Robert Nashak's enlightening lecture on mobile gaming and, in particular, the graffiti challenge:

http://graffiti.playdo.com/

Nick Clark and Mike Brinker - 1st playtest

Our development cycle has been pretty interesting. We originally started out with a few ideas that related to four player games, with each

person having their own playing board. Each board consisted of a grid pattern and in the center of these four boards stood a single tower, meant

to hold information valuable to all the players. This proved a bit difficult to design for right away, so to try out a few methods of gameplay,

we narrowed down the number of players to 2, scrapped 3 of the boards in favor of one and went with a traditional style of 2d play involving

colored tiles that rotate (minus the tower). Our first playtest was done with a rapidly proto-typed concept in java (thanks to our illustrious

programmer Mr. Clark). Jenova Chen graced us with his comments for our first playtest.

Here's the feedback:

The game was very simple to start with, and seemed to favor whoever started first. After a while, it became difficult to think ahead to try and

make squares by rotating them, and then it became too confusing. It seemed too boring for a puzzle game because I am only given a limited amount

of choices/moves with each sqaure tile. Chess involves a variety of different pieces with different moves, therefor being more

intersting/strategy wise when playing at a slow pace. This game either needs to move faster and involve less thinking or involve more strategy

and move slower (more moves). Maybe limiting the places in which the player can place tiles, or starting from the bottom of the board moving up

would work better. Another idea is to have pieces converging from all edges around the outside of the board moving inward (like gravity from

four directions). As the players form squares, they disappear or explode, allowing the others to fall into place. You also need some sound affect for the rotation so people know what just happened. Make the controls simpler too, all you need to do is limit the player to rotation of just their own possibilities for making squares, and then just make it a single left mouse button click. I liked a smaller grid with bigger tiles because it was easier to see and took less time to play.

At first, my game of moons was a disaster. Every aspect was changed from the original idea. The game requires resource management and territory conquest. Players can focus on territory conquest or offensive assaults. The board consists of three concentric circles, all of which can move clockwise or counterclockwise. The territories are places on these circles called orbits (near, middle, and far).

The board was too big. At first, the orbits consisting of 5, 10, 20 territories surrounded the planet. This was too big. The players avoided each other and the engagement process was never realized. So the board has been reduced to 4, 8, 16 territories in the respective orbits.

Another problem with the territories was the number of usable territories. Initially, every territory could be used to generate resources, but the game works better with squares that are useless regarding resources and consequently can only be traversed.

Originally each territory consisted of a temperature (cold, temperate, hot), a gravity (light, medium, heavy) and an atmosphere (thin, moderate, dense). This was ridiculously complicated. Currently, each planet has only a temperature (cool, warm) and a gravity (light, heavy). The players could generate a strategy with this simplified combination.

Cards were a complete failure. One failed approached tried making the player draw a specific type of build card in order to colonize a planet or build a specific structure on the planet. Completely terrible idea. Now there is a build phase where the player can build any structure as long as they have the right amount of resources. The aspect of cards that the players liked was the difference in the types of resource generation cards, which introduced more choice instead of luck. However, every player wanted more variety of cards, so more special cards were created.

For the first iteration, the players had the choice of choosing which planet to have a starting colony. The constraint was that the selected planet had to be in the first orbit. For the first few rounds, every player was doing the same thing: building defense and the sending a ship to the second orbit. Bad. Thus, each player now chooses any planet to start in. Also, when the mission cards were upgraded, the choice of the first planet was more compelling to the players.

Tweaking the resources has proven consistently difficult. How much does each player start with? What is the cost for each construction? At first, the players started with just three resources. This was not enough. So then, some prices went down and the players started with more. At certain points in the game, a player would want to build something but did not have the resources, but this situation did not arise frequently enough. The resource issue remains somewhat unresolved…much like many other aspects.

The rotation idea was not utilized enough, so more rotation cards were made and a rotation event was created. One player did finally win one of the games, but the enjoyment substandard. Nobody hated it, so I took that as a plus.

After significant changes to the game after the showing in class, I presented the newer version to a new group of players, that being my non-gaming friends. None of them are board gamers and only some play video games more than once a week.

The changes that were made before their playtest are as follows: 1) the territories were redrawn so that they were identifiable. There are now four types of territory. Each territory generates a resource (there are still four resources but with new names) that corresponds in theme with the territory. As a test, I asked 20 people individually if they could identify each territory. I handed them one of each territory. Every person identified each of the four territory types correctly. Then I gave them a list of the four new resources and asked if they could designate which resource corresponds with each territory. Only one person got confused. So 19/20 = 95%.

I adopted some of the Settler’s ideas in that a die roll produces resources for everyone based on the number that shows up. However, there is a chance that the die value benefits the roller more often. In the playtest, the players did not like the idea of giving up any of the advantages that the beneficial numbers allowed.

For the playtest, the players made it through two games. In the first game, the players were learning how to play. As they progressed through the first game, they were trying to figure out what the advantage and disadvantages were in making each move. Of the three players, one player built ships and played offensively, one player built colonies and tried to be expansive, and the third player built up cities. The offensive player hurt the expansive player. Resource generation for the expansive player became difficult, however he attributed it to learning more than game play. But the more dire his situation became, the more vocal he became about the rolls, because certain die values would help him and others would do nothing. The offensive player was the only one with a water generating territory. This made water a very valuable resource. Trading occurred about once every four turns. Water was so valuable that the player who had that resource would never trade it. The city player built up his cities and ended up winning.

During the second game, the players really enjoyed placing territory. It took one player almost two minutes to decide on his home moon because he was trying to maximize, in his opinion, the best resource generation. He did not want one die roll generating multiple resources, instead, he wanted each roll to generate something. In this game, the players pushed the tempo. Each player wanted the turn to come back to him. Nobody was offensive. Players colonized, built cities, and built defense. The first player built defense quickly, which seemed to prohibit any offensive-mindedness. Players vied for specific territories because again, only one person colonized any water, making water valuable at the beginning of the game. This time, the players went after their territorial deficiencies. Eventually, two of the three colonized multiple water territories, which lowered the market value of water. Trading was very prevalent. Two out of every three turns, trading existed. Some players even offered resources for safe passage. There is no rule in existence about that type of trade, but it was nice to see that players were looking at more options instead of trying to figure things out.

By the second game, players easily grasped the game. The second game went very smoothly. The one player without any city upgrades was the weakest. The other two players were very balanced throughout the game and at the end. One player focused on cities and the second focused on all around development. In the end, the well-rounded player had two more points.

One of the players rotated the board in a unique way. It was a neat twist and something that I did not think of but in the end, it did not work.

I asked the players about inserting chance cards. They liked the idea of being able to steal resources and perform special operations. However, they did not want to give up any advantage of the die roll. Another aspect that they agreed on is that the player must rotate the board when the event presented itself. Before this playtest, it was optional.

Angels of Heaven & Earth

A Game of Divine Strategy & Memory

Neil Oliver DelasAlas
Nina DelasAlas

Overview

For centuries there has been an ongoing war in Heaven.
The Revolting Angels, led by Gabriel, wants to take over the Throne to Heaven. They believe that God has forsaken them for creating Man. That the once great love God has for them now belongs to us. They grew jealous of Mankind for having God’s greatest gift: a soul. They came to be known as the Angels of Earth.
Now the Angels of Earth has found a human soul that will turn the tide of the War and destroy mankind.
The Angels of Heaven, led by Michael, has too found the key to finish this War...Danyael, a human born of Angel and Man. The only one who can stop Pyriel, the brutal Angel of Genocide, to take over God’s throne.
Marked By Fate, Doomed By Prophecy... Time Is Running Out For Mankind.

Materials
Dimensional Gameboard – 2x9x8
Character Tokens:
Angels of Heaven – 18 pc
Angels of Earth - 18 pc

Object of the Game

The game in brief both players have an army of 18 pieces which includes theKEY. The object of the game is to eliminate your opponent’s character tokens and his theKey or bring your theKEY to your opponent’s side. Before play starts, the players deploy their troops in secret.

Pre-Game Preparations

This is a Two-Player Game. Each player rolls the die to see who goes first. The highest die roll wins, and that player gets to pick which side he wants to play and get the first move.

Deploy your character tokens at Board A in secret.
(*Each player will get same amount of character sets, w/c is 18.)
Arrange the Character Tokens on your side of the grid (9x2), they should be facing you. This can be random it depends on you.

Choose an Arbiter for the Game.

Game Play

Arbiter
Is the only person who can view the hidden Characters of each player’s side.
Is the only person who can judge the confrontation between two opposing characters.

Game Board
The Dimensional Gameboard consists of 2 - 9x8 Square grid, Board A (top) and Board B(bottom). A Board consists of 2 parts:
Players’ Grid: consists of two 9x2 grids located on each side of the board.
Middle Grid: consists of a 9x4 grid.

Movement
This game is turn-based. No more than one piece may stand on a square. Each character piece has their own special movements (see Appendix)

Characters& Ranking

See Appendix A

Game Phases

Phase 1 (Board A Phase)

Movement on any board level. (See Appendix A)

Phase 2

Movement from one board level to another. (see Appendix B)

Attacking
The action involves picking up the attacking piece, tapping the piece attacked. The Arbiter then will look at both pieces. Then, he will remove the lower ranking piece. No rankings will be exposed, only the Arbiter must know the Ranks of both pieces. If both pieces are of equal rank, both pieces will be removed from play.

Winning the game

You win if you succeed in capturing your opponent’s theKey or bringing your theKEY to the opponent’s side. You also win if your opponent is unable to make any other moves.

After playing our very first version in class, although we personally did not notice it much, our game proved to be very much like a version of the existing Stratego game.

We are devoted to sticking with our premise-- angels of heaven and earth-- so we made the following changes:

For our second version, we incorporated some chess moves to certain characters and added a "second phase" (lower) board for 2-dimensional play. Problems arose once again: what are the players' incentives to go to second phase; since no incentive, players may as well play the whole game on the top board-- thus, bringing us back to our first version only now with chess-like moves-- same initial problem: "what makes this our game"?

In attempts to modify an existing strategy game, we have added features, moves that do not necessarily enhance/modify the mechanics and merely making them more complicated.

After the playtests, it was a bit frustrating to see that we were unable to incorporate our vision of making a strategy game of our own with the premise of angels at war.

(Final version rules and playtests results coming soon.)

MODIFIED: Final

Angels of Heaven & Earth

A Game of Divine Strategy & Memory

Neil Oliver DelasAlas
Nina DelasAlas

Overview:
For centuries there has been an ongoing war in Heaven.
The Revolting Angels, led by Gabriel, wants to take over the Throne to Heaven. They believe that God has forsaken them for creating Man. That the once great love God has for them now belongs to man. They grew jealous of Mankind for having God’s greatest gift: a soul. Now, the Angeles have decided to attack and conquer Earth—to do so, war of Angeles in Heaven must continue and war of Angels on Earth must start. Only one group of Revolting Angels can conquer Earth—they must bring their key (holding all their celestial powers combined) to their opposing Angels territory. Once there, the war will finally stop.

Materials
Dimensional Gameboard – 2x9x8
With 4 portal spaces (fixed to the boards)
Character Tokens:
Angels of Player 1 – 20 pc
Angels of Player 2 - 20 pc

Object of the Game

Both players have an army of 20 of Revolting Angels (including a KEY) each—which they all deploy in Heaven (top board). The object of the game is to prevent the opponent’s key from entering their territory on Earth (lower board) (for this will mean that the opponent has conquered Earth). There are four designated portals from Heaven to Earth and part of the object of the game is to utilize these portals in the favor of their strategy to get their Angels and KEY on Earth.

Pre-Game Preparations

Each player gets 20 tokens. They, then, deploy their character tokens on the first three rows of the top board in secret. Players are free to deploy their characters in any way they prefer (based on their strategy).

Game Play

Arbiter
Is the only person who can view the hidden Characters of each player’s side.
Is the only person who can judge the confrontation between two opposing characters.

Game Board
The Dimensional Gameboard consists of 2 - 9x8 Square grid, Board A (top) and Board B(bottom). A Board consists of 2 parts:
Players’ Grid: consists of two 9x3 grids located on each side of the board.
Middle Grid: consists of a 9x2 grid with 4 communal portal spaces to lower board.
Corners: There is a special portal space in each corner space (2 for each player’s side) which can only be used by the opponent.

Movement
This game is turn-based. No more than one piece may stand on a square. All characters may only move one space vertically and horizontally.

Attacking
The action involves picking up the attacking piece, tapping the piece attacked. The Arbiter then will look at both pieces. Then, he will remove the lower ranking piece. No rankings will be exposed, only the Arbiter must know the Ranks of both pieces. If both pieces are of equal rank, both pieces will be removed from play.

Winning the game

You win if you succeed in capturing your opponent’s Key or bringing your KEY to the opponent’s side/territory on Earth (lower board) only—thus, claiming Earth.

Angels Order: (highest ranking first)
[Character Name (Number of pieces) Function]
Celestials(2)Eliminates all characters except Spy
Seraphim (3)Eliminates Archangels, Angels & Key
Archangels (3) Eliminates Angels & Key
Angels (9) Eliminates Spy & Key

Other Characters:
Spy (2) Eliminates all characters except Angels
Key (1) The Key can be eliminated by any piece including the opposing Key; a Key eliminates the opposing Key when it takes aggressive action by moving into the same square occupied by the other key.

Angels of Heaven & Earth (Final) Playtest

After several modifications, this final modification brought us the most satisfactory results. Not only have we modified it to play out the Heaven and Earth theme, but also to keep the strategic and psychological aspect of the game more fun and playable. With the implementation of the portal holes, the players get the feel of having a mission and building their strategy around that mission. Being an arbiter for this version was not too bad as well because arbiter keeps looking forward to playing, also interesting is seeing the different strategies employed each time.

Chris Roth - Playtest of Feudin' Hillbillies
Completely forgot to blog about this until now, but here it is:
After showing the game to the class, I made some pretty significant changes to the way that the characters interacted in my game, as well as adding a couple of elements to the game to give it a point. At first, the game was pretty much just two players shooting at each other until they killed each other. That didn't really result in any fun, and the audience that I tested this on was very clear on this. The ammo was also somewhat boring, because all it did was go straight in the direction the player was facing, which in the case of the female character was undetectable by the user, but was based on the last direction key they pressed. There were a few other things that needed to be fixed, but let's get to what the end result was:

Feudin' Hillbillies - Game Description

So, making the game just be something where you launch miscelanious farm stuff at your opponent didn't really turn out to be as fun as I had thought. To give the player a purpose, and to help entertain them, I added a plot (so to speak) and made some objectives. Now you play as either the guy or the girl, and you are supposed to go around the farmyard and collect boxes of "parts" for the farmer who sent you here! While you are running around on this scavenger hunt, you and your opponent have the ability to launch cows and chickens at one another. The cows are slower and cost you more hitpoints, while the chickens are fast and fly over the fences! The cows of course bounce off the fences in a quasi-random fashion.
In order to combat your opponent's launched managerie, you can pick up turnips that appear randomly on the map. Each turnip will recover 1 hit point for you, which is the same amount that the chickens take away! (3 turnips = 1 cow)
The characters now indicate where they are facing with a white arrow that appears next to them facing the direction that you will fire in if you hit the fire button.
Oh yeah, one other minute detail, there is now music in the game, as per a recommendation from a friend in my ITP 280 class :)

So, by taking this game and sending it out to my friends on AIM and dragging a few of them over to my computer, I got some interesting feedback. The first reaction on the IM screen whenever I sent it to anyone was something along the lines of "what the hell?" or, more poinently, "WTF?!" Typically these questions were followed by a string of typed laughter, or its equivalent, and some positive feedback about the game being cracked out, but a lot of fun.
In person, the feedback was much more useful. Two players competing for the collection of boxes while sitting right next to each other is a lot of fun, both to watch, and to play. My friends that played this game almost immediately started talking smack to each other. The user interaction is fantastic, and a lot of fun to watch, and more fun to be a part of!

The game pretty much explains itself (in the instructions and a bit of trial and error), and the users never had too much trouble with figuring out the game. The only complaint that I received consistently was that the ammunition didn't disappear when the players ran over it. Aside from this, virtually all of my playtesters said that the game was a lot of fun, and the laughed quite hard at least once during the game.

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