GCG: 'Student Postmortem: Harding University’s Tripwire'

The latest feature for Gamasutra sister educational site Game Career Guide presents a postmortem of Harding University student game Tripwire, a "reverse checkers" board game with elements of medieval fantasy, complete with different types of characters. In this excerpt, the team member Aaron Moore explains how the team used the concept of different character classes to influence the game's design: “The selected and approved theme was ‘Medieval Fantasy.' The implementation of the suicide checkers game with this theme was what required the most thought, but the members eventually came up with a rather clever idea. At the time of player piece selection, the user would be able to choose what ‘class' his character would be. This included Wizard (arcane magic user), Rogue (sneaky thief), Ranger (combat-oriented woodsman), and Dwarven Demolitionist (shortened to "dwarf" within the game). The character corresponding to that class would be their avatar. The pieces were to be represented by traps associated with their class (magic traps for wizards, bear traps for rangers, etc), and score was kept in the form of character health. When a jump occurred, the character's piece would move over the opponent's trap, setting it off. The opponent would take damage from this, and his health would be reduced by one point (thus when all of his opponent's pieces were gone, his health would be gone as well).” You can now read the full Game Career Guide feature on the subject, with more from the students concerning the development successes and difficulties that went into creating Tripwire (no registration required, please feel free to link to this feature from external websites).