Changi Floor Zero

Final Board of Changi Floor Zero

Project Overview

Project Length: 1 Month

Team Size: 4 Members

Roles: Game Designer, Systems Designer

Context

Our team wanted to create a co-operative boardgame where the players have to work together to escape the place. Because it was halloween period, we wanted to work on something that is halloween related. Thus after looking through various concepts, we landed on the idea of exploring Changi Hospital because of the mysteries that surrounds that location in Singapore.

Player fantasy

A ghost hunting expedition to the haunted old Changi Hospital goes horribly wrong, the players now have to find a way out of Floor Zero,

Inspirations

Forbidden Desert

One of the key inspirations that we had was forbidden desert. In this game players have to work together to escape the desert.

Variable player abilities

Each of the player has a set actions that they can perform but each player might be better at performing certain actions compared to others. This gives the players a sense of camaraderie in the game as they would have to work together to solve the issue at hand.

The health system in this game is called "water." In the scorching deserts when you run out of water, you'd be dehydrated and die. In this game, everyone needs to escape the desert alive. This adds a thematic twist to the desert setting and it encourages teamwork between players. We have decided to adapt this health system for our game, renaming it "Sanity." In our haunted hospital setting, players must remain calm, as losing their sanity will leave them "trapped" forever.

Game's AI

Every end of the round the player have to draw from a deck that determines the actions that the desert would take. This creates a common "enemy" the players have to work around and strategise against. We decided to incorporate some elements of an enemy AI that the players have to work against, namely the ghosts that are roaming around.

Nemesis

Another game that inspired our game was Nemesis. Nemesis is a semi-cooperative game where players may chose to work together or they can work on their own personal goals indicated.

We drew inspiration from Nemesis and incorporated the mechanic where players can discover items within rooms. However, this action gradually reduces the number of items available in the room, creating a sense of exploration as players search. This approach also enables us to balance the quantity of items that can be found throughout the game.

Another element borrowed from Nemesis is the potential encounter with an alien in a room, triggering a combat phase. In our game, we replaced this with a "shock factor," where players may unexpectedly find ghosts when entering a room. This twist prompts players to strategize carefully and collaborate, weighing the risks of exploring new rooms against the benefits of discovery.

One aspect that fascinated us was the concept of aliens roaming the ship. These enemies are naturally drawn to rooms with the most "Noise." Whenever a player performs an action in a room—such as picking up an object or completing an objective—they generate noise, which subsequently attracts the aliens. To determine the amount of noise created, the player rolls a D10.

This mechanic introduces emergent dynamics, allowing players to strategize in unique ways. For instance, players might intentionally create noise to lure aliens away from critical areas or use the distraction to assist their teammates in accomplishing objectives without interference. This adds layers of tension and tactical decision-making to the gameplay.

Design thoughts

Character Abilities

Like Nemesis and Forbidden desert, we wanted our characters to have different abilities that would encourage them to work together in the game. We thought of 6 roles each with a special ability that the player choose to play as.

Turn Order

Board development

We wanted to have 2 different maps, one for the ghosts and one for the players. This would include different pathways they can traverse around. This was to depict how the ghosts are phasing within the game. However, during our internal playtests, we realized that that would be slightly cumbersome for the players to keep track of both the ghosts and the players at the same time. The players kept forgetting to reduce their health when a ghost is within their rooms.

Room Tiles

We adopted several mechanics that we found particularly effective, such as incorporating vents to allow players to traverse the board quickly and efficiently. This adds strategic options for movement and escape. To ensure every room feels unique, we designed specific actions tied to each room. For example, players can eat in the cafeteria to regain energy, or use the surveillance cameras in the security room to monitor activity. These room-specific actions enrich the gameplay experience by adding variety and thematic depth to the environment.

Ghost AI

In the initial design, we used a noise system to guide ghost movements. Players would place a noise token in a room when entering it for the first time or performing an action, and at the end of the round, the ghost AI would move toward rooms with the highest noise levels. Although intriguing, we found this mechanic potentially too complex for players to fully understand.

To address this, we introduced a randomized movement system for the ghosts. At the end of each round, players roll a D4, and the ghosts move according to the dice results. For example, a roll of 2 prompts all ghosts on the board to follow corridors marked "2" and settle in the respective rooms. Only Ghosts can also use red corridors while players can't because ghosts can phase through walls. This adjustment simplifies gameplay mechanics while maintaining a sense of unpredictability and tension, encouraging players to think on their feet and adapt to ever-changing scenarios.

Iteration 1

26/03/2019 observations 

• The rules are generally hard to read.

• The player abilities needs to be balanced.

• The noise mechanic seems a little distracting as we need to consciously remember to constantly put onto the board.

• The noise markers made the board look very packed and messy.

• The ghosts in the game seemed a bit too powerful as they consumed the noise marker(s) to make their movements.

• The lock door markers made the game hard to play as it immediately uses all player actions to remove one lock marker on the board.

• The goals of the game were not very clear.

Changes Made

• Re-Edited the rulebook.

• Removed noise markers from the game.

• Made the ghost move at the end of every turn instead of consuming the noise markers. 

• Changed the goals of the game into a single theme and made only it one main mechanic to reveal the items.

Iteration 2

02/04/2019 observations

• Ghosts still felt pretty weak as most players just chose to go pass ghosts that stood in their way and acquire the insanity damage. The damage did not really leave much impact.

• Some players were confused regarding the axle convergence mechanic for finding the generator and lift keys.

• Some player were unclear as to when they should be drawing the exploration event cards.

• Playtesters felt that there are too many locked doors cards under the exploration event cards. 

Changes Made

• We made the rules more easily understandable on where the item is spawned.

• We removed the zero instead for the sanity tracker on each player role cards, so it starts from 1 instead of 0.

• We reduced the chances of drawing locked room event cards by increasing the number of invisible events. 

• We made the drawing of event cards consistent by having players draw from them when moving to other rooms, regardless of whether the rooms were revealed or not.

• We tweaked the Counsellor’s ability to calm another player down. In the tweaked version now, the counsel ability will reduce another player’s insanity track by 1 using 1 action point. Originally, it reduced another player’s insanity track by 2, which was too overpowered.

Production

To create a high-fidelity mock-up of the final level, we sought out a printing shop capable of producing 2xA1-sized posters. After some inquiries, we discovered a shop at Sunshine Plaza that offered to print these on A1 plastic boards at a reasonable cost. We proceeded with the printing and meticulously cut out the special tiles one by one to ensure precision. Additionally, we printed a deck of item cards. While the shop kindly offered to laminate the cards, we opted to decline due to budget limitations.

Final Iteration

Post Mortem

Problems

One of the biggest problems we faced in the creation of CFZ was the challenge of balancing many layers of mechanics to interface with each other in a way that works. Originally, our idea was much larger in scope. We had planned to add various ghosts, each with their own movement and spawning mechanics, a possesion system whereby the ghosts can control the player tokens more variations of rooms and even a system where a player who has gone insane will become an enemy instead of the game ending. 

We even attempted to add another board into the game as a ghost realm and have the ghosts transit forth and back between the main board and the ghost realm board as sort of a multi-dimensional travel mechanic.Considered a translucent board and invisible ink to increase the thematic value of the game as well. 

Time constraints kicked in, and we were faced with even less opportunities to playtest and balance new mechanics. Our original game was already proving a challenge to balance. 

Mitigations

We made the decision to cut off a number of mechanics. The Noise System whereby entering new rooms leave ‘Residues’ for ghosts to follow was taken out entirely. It was a system which was confusing for many players, and ultimately the removal of the system did not have a large impact on the game.

As with games that have many interlocking systems, many issues which were not immediately apparent popped up pretty often. For example, the residue mechanic made the ghost movements broken as the the ghosts could move too frequently and create too much damage if any players were caught in residue-infested rooms. Originally we thought this mechanic would work great to discourage players from leaving too much noise residues and encourage them to strategize their movement but it was not practical when players were forced to always leave noise residues when exploring rooms, causing the broken effect of excess ghost movement and damage on the players.

Edge cases where rare issues could break the game were also a big no in our books.