Link to the drive with the project (in french)
Introduction
Boardgame project made alone.
This project had an obligation of using some wood plates with a beveled edge.
Development
The basic idea was to make a free for all versus game, for 3 or 4 players, with a strategic aspect.
The result is a card game, where the wood chunks are used as resources, depending on a colour on them. Every turn, each player chose 2 out of the 8 (two times four colours). Depending on the resulting combination, they may use a card from their hand, or a small effect that only uses the wood.
One of the biggest difficulties of this game was to find a way to balance the selection of wood chunks, in a way that no player would be disadvantaged. The best solution was a rotating draft. This means that they chose one wood chunk, following the order 1-2-3-4-4-3-2-1. This means that the fourth player is compensating being last by having immediately both their chunks, whereas the first player has one chunk that they can count on, and one that they'll have no say in what it is. In addition to this, the player's order is changing every turn, in a clockwise fashion. This means that if on one turn the players' order was "A1-B2-C3-D4", then next turn they'll become "A4-B1-C2-D3", etc.. This way, the selection is rotating, and nobody is stuck with only one way to chose their chunk. (for instance, the first player never getting the pair they want).
Another complex aspect was the balance of the game. Early in the game, it was decided that each color was focused on some kind of effects, with 16 different pairing of one major and one minor colour. The idea was to mix and match the effects to get a global logic for the game. This was somewhat a success, but needed a complete rebalance after the first test.
The basis of the system is a classic fighting with HP. A player with 0 or less HP is out of the game, and the last one standing wins.
Result and evolution
The first test was a failure. The game had way too much healing, making the players virtually unkillable.
This problem was mitigated by reevaluating the values, and putting a cap to the HP, so that they can never get higher than their starting value.
The next tests went way better, due to the nerfing of healing.
Right now, the game is not being updated. The result was nice. A new version would probably need to be completely rethought, and being more different from popular card games.
