I’m done!

Let me present to you, Tiny Huge Planet! The board game about extracting minerals from planets and building gigantic space armies in space!

Click here to play!

I quite underestimated how much time it would take to create a polished board game. You have to refine all of the rules to make them as simple as possible, but not too simple to make it a trivial game. You also have to write down these rules clearly and concisely, explaining how they work.

This dare was quite a good experience. Even if I did spend a lot more time than I thought I would in front of the computer. (The whole point of making a board game was to get away from the computer.)

Next up is the time lapse and postmortem! And of course playing all of these awesome games!

There’s only a couple of more hours left until midnight. So here’s a summary of what I’ve been doing today:

Started the day by getting the theme wrong on twitter, doing dishes, preparing dinner for later (see below) and going to the gym. After all of this was done I was ready to tackle the theme!

Space-themed board game of deliciousness

I knew I wanted to make something with war, space and mining resources on planets. My first thought was something like Monopoly but later steered more towards Settlers and then Risk. I started prototyping it with my 8×8 Reversi board, dice to represent planets and Reversi pieces to represent the players’ units.

Basically, you control units that you can use to attack other players or defend your planets. Claiming two planets or more with your units meant that you could produce more units each round. When a player loose all of their units they’re out of the game.

First prototype

This game was a bit too simplistic and didn’t really convey any theme so I decided to add cards to the mix. I used ordinary playing cards to prototype, writing down what each of them represented. (I plan on creating cards with graphics later.)

The production of new units by capturing planets turned into a Production card which added an additional unit to play. Then I added the rule that said that after each round you get to pick up one card for each planet you occupy. This meant that you would still produce new units after each round and gave incentive for players to occupy planets. This also meant that I could add a lot of new fun cards.

Now with cards!

With the new cards I managed to sneak in another reference to the theme: the Tiny world card that actually destroys the outer most edges of the board which means that the grid that the game is played on gets smaller.

Notes from brainstorming

Now I just have to write down all the rules. Also the attacking isn’t really sorted out yet. But that’s next!

If you find the game interesting it’d be great if you could leave comments on the official rules document where anything is unclear or if something could be improved, or to just spam.

* Goes back to writing rules *

It’s my 3rd dare and this time I intend to mix it up a bit by deviating from my comfort zone (developing video games) and create a tabletop game which will be great fun!

Goal

Hopefully I’ll have lots of time to spend making games this weekend so I’m aiming at creating at least a dozen games and polishing up one of them. Maybe add a little bit of graphics, who knows?

Tools

My prototyping kit you can see below.

Prototyping kit

It includes a deck of cards, dice in a bag, a Reversi board with pieces, notebook, pen, a bunch of papers and a jar of raspberry jam. And no, the jam is not for eating.

Anyone else doing tabletop games this dare?