Making I Like That Doggy's Style

Hello! Below is the rationale and my process behind creating my print and play game, I Like That Doggy's Style. You can find it here on itch. I highly recommend giving it a shot! Ok, happy playing and reading. :)

Design Rationale

In creating I Like That Doggy’s Style, I created my design goals in line with the criteria for making the game as part of my Game Design intro course at Utah. The first constraint was a playtime of 15 minutes, which is why I decided to aim for a design that is simple to pick up and understand within the first minute of play. Simplicity was essential for the success of this game, which is why I chose to use standard playing cards that players will be familiar with. Additionally, the limited action pool and the limited win conditions make moves calculable without eating into the game time. The depth, therefore, comes from the challenge of managing the little money the player has and taking risks of either uncovering the win conditions or leaving them a mystery. The rising price of the actions is also intentional, in order to ramp up the difficulty and ensure that choices remain interesting, even as the player becomes more familiar with the win conditions and systems of the game. 

The other major constraint for creating the game was making it a single player game. In my experience playing single player games, I have often found that systems of enemies or obstacles often fall short of simulating actual competition or equality between players and enemies. Instead, I find that players are either completely dominating over waves of inconsequential enemies or fighting one massive, indomitable boss. I wanted to recreate the feel of a close quarters competition between esteemed rivals, like a match of professional poker or a real life dog show. To do this, I centered tests around the feel of the opponents to ensure that they were on a relatively level playing ground with the player. As a result, I believe each of the rivals has a distinct sort of personality to them, and the player can find themselves challenged as their clothes selections amount them points. In the same vein, the player can feel pride for "outsmarting” their rivals and depriving them of their ideal outfits. 

Lightheartedness was a central mood I aimed to create with the theming and the gameplay, which supported the short duration of the game and the enjoyability of both successful and failed playthroughs. This mood and theming makes the stakes relatively low compared to other deadly, world-bearing consequences type games, and that helps a player make choices more comfortably without fear of “death”, while still emphasizing a player’s competitive edge. The silliness of the high-fashion dog show also means that player’s won’t be too caught up in their defeat, because the competition is all in the spirit of fun and comes with a free imaginary dog. I hope you enjoy playing I Like That Doggy’s Style, and may your pup find success as a fashion extraordinaire!

Design Diary

The original concept behind I Like That Doggy’s Style was a micro-deck builder of sorts, where your goal was to defeat certain predetermined dog opponent hands by playing clothing cards that synergize with one another. This original design came with certain issues and limitations. For one, the cards synergizing with one another makes choices less interesting, as there will typically be one objectively right option to choose to make your outfit more successful. Additionally, predetermined enemy hands make for little replayability due to the player’s knowledge of the hands. 

Rapid prototyping for the game began with the creation of win-condition cards, using a standard deck of cards as the base. I began testing the system in multiplayer play rather than singleplayer, because I could more efficiently understand how different people could grasp the mechanics of the game and how different amounts of available resources impacted player agency. For example, early on in development, the losing players received only 2 dollars, which made winning practically impossible. At the same time, when the first player received 12 dollars, the challenge was trivialized, and the game was less fun overall. 

When I was happy with the overall shop and scoring system, I began to convert my game to single player, which started with the creation of rival patterns. I tried to revisit the idea of set hands that the rivals would play, but I found that the game lost its competitive edge that it has with multiplayer. At this point, I decided to simulate the rivals as separate players, with certain distinctions:

1. Rivals would not track money, as doing so would clutter the play space and work against the game’s intentionally simple nature. 

2. Rivals would have unique, predictable behavior that could effectively score points under different win conditions. 

3. Because of the predictability of rival behavior, the player has a limited range of control over the rivals’ actions, making the rival immediately after the player the most influenced by the player’s actions. 

These distinctions allow the single player version to successfully mimic the importance of shop manipulation and consideration of opponent’s cards that is found in the multiplayer version. Due to the third property of the rivals, I decided that the most successful rival behavior should occur immediately after the player, so the player can best control that rival’s flow of cards. 

At this point, I wanted to extrapolate more on the player’s control over the latter two rivals, and I was dissatisfied by how static the shop could feel when less desirable cards were present. Here I decided to create a conveyor-belt flow to the shop to solve both of these issues. The first issue was solved because it ensured that the unknown card would always be the leftmost, so there was always an unknown element of risk to a contestant buying a card. It also helped me make the final opponent predictable by always buying the rightmost card, which should be the oldest card in the shop. The second issue was solved because of that final rival, who consistently cleared out the unbought cards at the end so the shop would be refreshed by the time the player acted again.

This mechanic also contributed to the game’s theming, as the shop could be treated like new clothes being introduced to the store. The first two rivals are both eager to find new clothes that fit their styles, while the final rival is happy to clear out whatever old clothes are available. 

Speaking of the game’s theme, it was a design goal of mine for the player to feel a sense of attachment to their dog beyond simply winning, so when I created the print and play, I decided to allow the player to decorate and name their dog if they chose. 

This point was where the polish phase started for me, since the central loop and systems were all in place. I made the Ace provide a discount of 1 dollar for cards of the same suit, so that there was more incentive to invest in an otherwise very expensive card.

I also decided to create a tenth win condition, which rewards totals under 16 in value. This helped me balance out the first rival Precious, because her use of royals and aces gave her an advantage on a lot of the win conditions in discrete and objective ways. Not only does she have high totals, royals and aces to achieve those conditions, she also has a lower range of card values, which increases the likelihood of matching pairs and sequences.

I also adjusted the matching cards win condition to provide an extra bonus for three of a kind because during testing, there were certain rare opportunities to get that three of a kind, so I felt inclined to reward it.