Kate's Game Design

Kate McNamara's game design blog

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(Week 6) Alfie Byrnes games night

This week I went to Alfie Byrnes games night. This is a board game meetup in Stephens green. I got to try loads of new games here. It was fun, I'd recommend any for any board game fan to go!

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(Week 5) Gaelcon

This week I went to Gaelcon in ballsbridge. It was a 4 day games con with mostly LARP and RPG games but war games and board games were also there. I tried an RPG and a LARP for the first time and I enjoyed them. The people were very nice and the atmosphere was fun. Id definitely recommend attending if you’re in the area.

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(Week 8) This week I played 'Zombie 15'. I didn't like this game but that may have been because we only played the first mission, we also didn't fully understand the premiss so it seemed like just a rush to the exit with no incentive to loot houses.

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(Week 7) This week I played ‘Spyfall’. This game is a deception game where you try find the spy. I really liked this game, the cards were pretty and the gameplay was always changing. I would definitely play this game again.

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(Week 6) This week I played ‘Caverna’. This game is based around building up your resources in a dwarfs mine/farm. I really enjoyed this game, it was designed very nicely and gameplay was fun. There are some problems with the game in my eyes though, first it’s a very long game, it took us 7 hours. The other problem I found was waiting for the other players to finish their turn, sometimes I was waiting for 10 minutes. Overall I did like this game but some improvements could be made.

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(Week 5) This week I played 'Fluxx'. It’s a card game in which the rules change every round. I didn’t like this mechanic as it was hard to remember to implement the new rules for that round. I did like the overall ascetic of the cards though.

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(Week 4) This week I got to play Risk: The Walking dead. It was the first time I had played a game of risk, it was really fun but also really long so we didn’t get to finish the game completely. I would definitely play again though.

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(Week 4)

This week I went to DubLudo in the liquor rooms. It was a fun night, I got to see lots of games during their development as opposed to after they're either finished or almost finished. I also got to talk with some small developers which was interesting.

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Spirals made in processing!

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(Week 3) This week I went to the green gallery. I was expecting it to be much bigger and more formal but some of the art was nice. Overall I wasn't that impressed.

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(Week 3) This week I played resistance Avalon. It was a very difficult game to learn because I was playing with experienced people. When I did eventually understand though I found it really fun, I enjoyed the deception element of the game.

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(Week 2) This week I went to Oktoberfest, it had long queues and not very many things to do (apart from the obvious) but it had a fun vibe so overall it was enjoyable. While at Oktoberfest we came across a small gallery run by the “Dublin dockers preservation society”, here they had some interesting pictures from the docks.

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(Week 2) This week I played 'Werewolf' for the first time, it was simple to learn and the rounds were quick. I enjoyed the game mainly because it had more interaction between players than some other board games I’ve played in the past.

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Work done in my second week of processing.

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(Week 1) This week I went to two exhibitions which were part of the cultural night in Dublin. The first was run by the ‘Irish architectural archive’, despite not having a huge interest in architecture I still enjoyed seeing some of the more unique Irish houses that have been built throughout the years. The second exhibition I visited was run by ‘Foras na Gaeilge’. They had a stage where they told stories through Irish and sang modern songs through Irish. They also had a large number of books which had been either translated to Irish or been written in Irish. It was interesting to the see the side of the irish language you don’t learn about in school.

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(Week 1) This week I played ‘Sheriff of Nottingham’ for the first time. The rules were simple enough to learn and it had an interesting concept behind it. We didn’t get to play it for long but it seemed fun, I’ll definitely try it out again.

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Introducing myself.

Hey! My names Kate McNamara, I’m 18 and from Dublin. This tumblr account will be updated with work I’m doing for my college course (DT508) in game design.