Analogue Game Making Process - Cannibal Stakeout

 How it was developed 

Cannibal Stakeout’s basic game premise and idea started as a game, where you would build a cannibal restaurant and avoid the police, however, you need to get your other friends caught and be the last restaurant standing.  

For basic gameplay and premise ideas, in small groups, we thought of Monopoly, Catan and Unstable Unicorns. We wanted the business elements of Monopoly and Catan, as well as the upgrade and downgrade features within Unstable Unicorns, and have the aspect of having players competitively fighting against each other during the game. 

Another big inspiration was Cult of The Lamb, which inspired me to have the people as animals in a cute art style to make the game less controversial. I also felt the gameplay loop within the game of Cult of the Lamb fitted well with this idea and could reflect well within a board game setting. 

We also knew a basic idea of how we wanted the game to function, with a section where you could travel across a board, and the rest would function like a card game. So, as I created a basic gridded map with roads across it with 4 different zones, where my other team member created the names and ideas for the zones. The zones would be – Vegan, Fast Food, Rich and Poor. Each would give different effects whenever you kill there (fast food can give you fries and more chunks, vegan can give you veggies and more blood, rich could give you more money but more suspicion, and poor you could lose money but have a chance to not to gain suspicion). My team mate also came up with the idea of having Dev cards and a Black Market, but at this point we hadn’t fully figured out how that was going to work. 

I quickly wrote up all the cards on a document, and we play tested the game. In this play test we got lots of feedback. During this feedback we were recommended to redo our economy system as it was hard to earn money and have something you can spend your money on. We were also told that not much wasn’t happening, so we were given the idea to add police into the game that could act as AI and hunt down the players. As well as this, because of the advice we were given, we changed Dev cards from being something you can buy, to something you get while levelling up. 

This advice from the first playtest resulted in us adding police. The way we decided this should work is by having the last person to play roll 2 six-sided dice and then, the police would move towards the closest kill token, or the player with the highest suspicion rating. If the police caught the player, they would lose all their ingredients and money. We also changed the economy to be easier to earn money, by having the restaurant make passive income after every round, earning the player 1 money card for every round. Because of the economy being difficult, we followed the advice and added a levelling up system, where each time you cook you level up, and different levels can grant you Dev cards rather than having to buy them. However, we kept the buying element into it, by allowing players to buy Black Market cards for better upgrades.  

With these added, we play tested it for a second time. Here for our feedback, we were suggested to have a mechanic where every round you don’t kill you lose 10 suspicion to give more benefits from not killing. We also changed it, so the police don’t take all your ingredients and money, and instead just took half of your ingredients and money if you have under 100 suspicion, however if you have over 100 you lose all your items.  

Within the third play test, we had added these new mechanics, and characters that players can choose from, each with different abilities to affect the game. This playtest went very well. We only played for one or two rounds, but we were told from one of the players that they had a very enjoyable time playing it and would like to play it again. 

By this stage, we had a new digitally made map with road tiles on the squares, colour coded zones, and cards made in photoshop by my teammate while I was drawing the logo, writing up the rules, and drawing the playable characters.  

Here was the art I had drawn for the characters: 

 

 

 

 

Here is the Logo I drew for the game: 

 

 

What changed from your original idea? 

Our original idea was basic, we had the idea of having a Cannibal Restaurant game where you could play very competitively, try, and screw each other over, and work strategically with elements of chance to make it more interesting. However, through looking at other games like Monopoly and Catan, we were able to develop the game more. We prepped the game as early as we could for play testing as it was incredibly important to us that we got the mechanics right and fun before we settled on any design and art for the game. We did get card designs done, and a board drawn up on paper and photoshop, as well as drawing some original pieces, however the design of the game was not our top priority known our time limit. For the artstyle and some more inspiration of the gameplay I also looked to Cult of the Lamb as I felt that their cute art style mixed with a dark subject matter and engaging gameplay could fit well within an analogue game setting. 

How well did you work as a team? 

As a team we worked very well. My teammate Dylan made lots of the cards, the board, produced the card names and some ideas like the event cards, dev cards and black-market cards, while I done some drawing, wrote up the rules, tracked our progress and thought about how the game might function. This worked very well as it allowed us to have an idea what the game might look like, while always having it in a playable stage to playtest new features.  

What would you do different if you could do it again? 

I would perhaps next time like to focus more on the design side as that was very lacking in our work as we focused a lot on the playability of the game. I would also like to add more cards to the Dev Cards and Black-Market Cards to allow for more chance and variables. A more diverse range in recipes and event cards I feel would also work well, as it gives more opportunities for player creativity and agency.  

How do you think the development of the game fit the original brief? 

I think the development of the game fit the original brief well, as we were told to make an analogue game, and analyse other board games which I have done in another post. I used the information and skills acquired from analysing the games we played in class, as well as using knowledge from games I have played at home to help create a more fun and entertaining game system. Mixing things from separate games to make something new.  

If you had more time, what would you add? 

If I had had more time, I would have added more cards to each deck, printed off our designs, and spent longer making sure the game looked good. I think we done well prioritizing the gameplay of the game and making sure it could play well, however next time I would like to make sure it looks good too, as well as having more cards for more variables and creative solutions.