The changing of the board

I’m working on designing a board game for the course Advanced game design at Uppsala university. Our aesthetic goal was to feel hunted/and or like a hunter. We knew we wanted a common goal or object to obtain in order for there to be a chase.

After going back and forth about our movement system we decided that the first system with movement cards had the best modular possibilities. With a range from one to five and with at most five cards on hand we could simulate the aesthetic goal of the game which was the feeling of being hunted/a hunter. Especially with the restrain of only being allowed to pick up one card after each turn (if you don’t have less than three cards on hand, in that case pick up two). This means that if you chose to play out two cards at your turn you will have less choice the next turn which could represent the players stamina.

We did however have a lot of different opinions at first on what board this would suit. At the start we made a prototype of a maze where the goal was to get the “cheese” in the middle, starting at the four corners. Each player made their way to the cheese but there weren’t that many outcomes. At first the board was unbalanced as it was made by drawing random paths around the board. So after that we made it symmetrical but that just made the gameplay more predictable. We then opted for a more open playing board with obstacles instead which worked a lot better and now we feel like we have a foundation to build our game on.