Overview:  Tabletop game where players battle to gather materials and craft the most tools.

Design Goals:

• Create a strategic and easy to learn tabletop game.
• Enjoyable for both players who enjoy high amounts of strategy and those enjoy a more casual experience.

How they were achieved:

• Created emergent dynamics through rule interactions. We made each rule in the game interact with as many other rules as possible, to limit what needed to be learned while maximizing the strategic depth. For example, the rules for placing tiles are fairly easy to understand, but there are numerous ways a tile can be placed, creating the opportunity for many interesting situations over the course of a game.
• We created the theme of being stuck on a desert island to tie into the mechanics. You are exploring an unfamiliar area by placing tiles, and you craft tools using the found materials, which helps the player with their goal of getting off the island.
• Borrowed mechanics from various other board games, using common conventions to help the player understand the game quicker.
• Added ways for players to directly interact with each other, which resulted in lots of fun interpersonal dynamics, adding an extra layer of enjoyment to the game beyond the gameplay itself.

Takeaways:

• Adding more rules doesn’t always add more strategic gameplay. This game went through many iterations, and tons of different rules were added. In the end, we found the best version of the game was quite a stripped back version of what it had been in the past.
• Tying the theme to the mechanics not only makes the game feel more cohesive, but allows new players to understand the rules more quickly.
• Playtesting is invaluable for determining if the game works.

Team size: 4

Role: Game Designer, Writer, Graphic Designer

Project length: 6 months

Tools: Illustrator, Photoshop