Creation of Contagious PnP

I was inspired to create this game by the situation I was in during Lockdown which lasted 3 months in my country. Still is but most things are getting back to normal. 

In trying to digest and understand the covid-19 problem, I decided to write down the things that appeared to be important in the fight against the pandemic.  So I broke it down from the top as follows.

The problem: infection

The exposure mechanisms: close contact (Super Spreader), Contaminated Surfaces. 

Controls to exposure(individual level): social distance, washing hands and disinfecting, personal protective equipment.

Organisational/institutional strategies (these are what I called specialist abilities): quarantine, Lockdown, finding a cure/treatment/vaccine.

From there, I created hand drawn cards and started testing the mechanics of game play against Card strength. For example;

I discovered that if an exposure card is at play and I have no individual controls in my hand, I registered an infection, and the only way to discard it is by finding the cure card. 

Also, if the control card I possess does not effectively control the mechanism at play, I still will be infected. 

The most important part of all was the ending. How was I going to have the game played in a definite amount of time? The answer lay in the institutional abilities; lockdown, quarantine and cure. And that set in hand is the basis of end game. However,  I thought it worth to insert clauses that didn't make it an easy walk to glory for a player such as not having any infection cards in hand to end game, or not having an exposure mechanism in your final set. This definitely adds to the difficulty and need for strategy in hand management. 

In about 2-3 weeks, I had a playable game and then with the game jam around the corner. The next problem to solve was fitting the game cards and instructions in just 4 sheets of A4 paper.

Originally,  the game had 50+ cards and I had to reduce the number but still keep the game play momentum and card distribution intact. With a number of solo and 2 player testing sessions, I found my match. 

So here we are, try it! The feedback will be greatly appreciated.