I watched a recent episode of Tabletop in which they played a game of Star Fluxx. It seemed an easy and fun game so I checked out the price on Amazon. It seems there are many different 'flavours' available and after checking reviews I decided that the Family version with its bright cards, 6-Adult age-range and quick play would probably best suit my needs. I ended up playing it with the Bratii - Minor (10) and Major (16) and that's all we ended up playing.
Post game session I chatted to the Bratii and the topic of the new BBC series of Merlin came up. Major was catching up with the previous so he hadn't seen the latest, but he'd seen the adverts.
"Oh in that case do you recognise this?" I asked and plugged my phone into an external speaker and checked my Deezer playlist for "Knights of Cydonia" by Muse.
"I know this" he said "but I don't know why or who it is?"
"How can you know you know it but not know it?" asked Minor
"He recognises it, but his brain isn't making the full connection as to what it is who who it's by" I replied
"Oh"
I took pity on him and told him it was Muse
"I knew that" he said
I flicked through to "Uprising" also by Muse.
"'Uprising' by Muse" he said within the first 5 seconds.
"Yeah I heard it during the Olympic opening ceremony and it caught my fancy" I said
"I thought it would make a good song for the Olympics"
"So Muse, how about 'Supermassive Black Hole'?"
"I've not heard of that one just those other two"
So I played him that and then worked my way through other music; which is where I started to feel my age.
Neither had heard of Jefferson Airplane, they'd not heard Alex Winston's "Velvet Elvis" as made famous by the Google Chrome advert. Minor knew "Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny" by Lemon Demon and happily started singing with The Beatles "Yellow Submarine" which Major didn't identify though at least he recognised it as The Beatles.
Minor enjoys "Iron Man" by Black Sabbath, but Major finds it repetitive. Neither had heard of Gorillaz or any of the songs I had by them. Major had heard of Blur, but couldn't name any specific songs he knew as being by them. Major knew, and Minor enjoyed, "Firestarter" by The Prodigy. Kudos though as Major instantly identified "Paradise City" by Guns 'n' Roses.
Spotting a theme with Major he's not that big on repetition, "Iron Man" Utah Saints, "Jump in the Line" by Harry Belafontane. He also needs an instant grab; anything that starts of with simple melody he'd have turned off before it builds. Minor seems more willing to listen to see if he likes it rather than make a snap decision. Between a 16-year old and a 10-year old I'd have thought it to have been the other way around.
I've been designing my own board game and yesterday the Bratii came over so I got to playtest it with them. I knew testing was important, having worked in QA in the past, but I've never been in the position of designer before and I can now look back and appreciate their reactions more. My urge to simply dismiss criticisms of the "How will the user/player know to do this" type were barely suppressed, but I just shut-up and made mental notes.
I won't deal with specifics, but an entire mechanism simply did not get used (except once by myself) and a loophole was quickly discovered and exploited by Major to boost his holdings. In terms of the way it was played it ended up with little competition between the players and more between the individual and the game. So that's how I'm going to redesign it. Remove the loophole and the unused mechanic, make it co-operative and tighten up a few of the other rules.
Gosh this is fun!
I took the Bratii down to the riverside a couple of weekends ago (before the deluge) and we ended up on one of the crazy golf courses. I won as usual, but they drew with each other and more importantly were only 2 points behind me - damn close. Why bother to mention this? Well they were both quite chuffed at getting that close and I think some might consider this a bit odd; surely they'd only be happy if they'd won?
I look around at the other adult/child relationships with games and I watch children's strokes ignored, I watch the adults 'accidentally' fluff easy shots and I see the kids winning a lot more than they should and I just don't understand it. I don't do that - with board games, cards and the fairground type things I play to win.
I was heading up to Merry Hill anyway so I offered to take the Bratii off their parents hands for the trip; we could have gone to Worcester instead, but a) In this weather I think others would be having the same idea and b) they visit Worcester a lot with their parents so this is still slightly different for them.
