From a Builders Game…

Rosie Lomme
Jul 20, 2017 · 2 min read

So far I haven’t told you anything about my board game itself. Not that I don’t like talking about it, but I noticed that every time I do talk about it, the game changes.

It started out as a resource gathering strategic building game, and right now I’m at a resource gathering strategic conquest game. It might seem like a small nuance, yet all the mechanics and elements that I originally implemented have been removed or altered.

Originally I wanted my game to be about building. Each player started out with some production buildings where they could gather tetris-like resource blocks. These resource blocks could be used to build new buildings such as a lumber mill, where they could produce even more resources or victory points. If a player wants to build a certain building, they had to meet some requirements on the quantity of resources and the placement pattern of these resources; some sort of blueprint puzzle. The harder the puzzle, the higher the yields. On top of this, the terrain the players were building on heavily influenced the placement of these resources, so you wanted to get to the best tiles as soon as possible.

I quickly realized this game was completely lacking theme and interaction. At that time, the only way to interact with other players was to block them, claiming certain tiles faster then other players could. It reminded me of Catan, yet without the tension added by the dice. A no-go.

I could do without theme, but not without interaction. I added some extra player actions to increase interaction, but every action I added impacted another part of the game that I had to fix too. Soon the game became too complex: too many rules, too many exceptions, and way too much to read. The time had come to scrap.

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Rosie Lomme

Written by

Aspiring board game designer and whimsical creative.

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