May 10th 2021
While at Michigan State I had a class where we made three board games. There were no rules or guidelines to make these games, just that it had to be a proper game with rules and a win condition. So each of the three board game PDFs you will find below are my own ideas, from concept, to rules to the designer art
(make sure to zoom out in the PDF viewer when looking at the designs of the boards and pieces)
Tools | Adobe Suite, Google Docs Duration | One month (per game) Team | Solo Roles | Systems Designer
One Against All
Is an asymmetrical Player vs Player board game, where one person plays as the boss and three others play as the heroes. I took inspiration from Dead By Daylight’s asymmetrical PvP gameplay and challenged myself to make a board game out of it. But instead of trying to avoid the more powerful player, the three heroes in the group have to coordinate and fight back.
MI-230-Project-1-Jackson-JohnsonChallenges & Solutions
Writing rules. With One Against All I had to learn how to write a detailed yet understandable rule book. The trickiest part was to stop myself from assuming the reader knew everything I did. There were many parts I didn’t explain properly or assumed readers would already understand common concepts if they played games as frequently as I do. To help fix these issues I took the time to read though my rule book and constantly ask myself if each rule was explained properly had had context that related to the rest of the game.
Two Kingdoms
This game is a large scale war & siege simulation where two players arrange and move their pieces on giant boards to win fights and kill the opponents Monarch. I took inspiration from the Fire Emblem series and Total War: THREE KINGDOMS. Wanting players to experience the war simulation of Three Kingdoms while switching it to a grid like Fire Emblem for an simpler transition to a board game. When trying to describe it to my parents in the simplest terms I would just call it “more complicated chess”
MI-230-Project-2-Jackson-JohnsonChallenges & Solutions
The complexity of game balance. With Two Kingdoms the biggest challenge was condensing and simplifying the complexity of the games that inspired it while still being a game that heavily rewards planning and strategy. So I decided to keep the rock,paper,scissors-esque strengths and weaknesses of units like Fire Emblem to promote proper positioning, which in turn gave the combat greater depth than just relying on dice rolls and throwing units at each other until someone loses.
Sacrifice
The third game is called Sacrifice. It is a game about coordination where five players have to traverse a circular board to gather items and damage a “Blood Crystal” because they are trapped inside a sacrificial circle and if they don’t break the crystal before it makes a full revolution around the board the players loose. For this final game I could not think of an idea to start from, so I asked one of my friends what kind of game he would like to play and he said something like “hmm how about going around the board to beat covid or something?”. The word “around” stuck in my mind and within the next few minuets I had the concept for this game and started writing down rules immediately. I made this with the intent on having players cooperate and strategize together against a single enemy.
Jackson-Johnson-project-3Challenges & Solutions
Map design. With Sacrifice the game is all about coordination and proper pathing to win the game, but I had trouble designing a board that really emphasized that. So I focused on designing the paths on the inside of the board to require less spaces to travel compared to the outer ring, which accomplished two things. First it lengthened the amount of total distance the NPC had to cover and second, players that took proper shortcuts would take down the NPC faster. In the end there was still a sense of urgency and tension but players were properly rewarded for making optimal plays.
