Joshua Dawkins

In this project, I had four weeks to design, prototype, and perform multiple playtests and iterations of a physical card game. I initially wanted to try my hand at a deck-building game similar to Star Realms, themed around high society. This initial design saw players hiring people cards such as butlers, maids, brokers, realtors, chefs, and so on, adding them to their decks and playing them to earn wealth and status. This wealth and status could be spent not only to hire new people, but also to build room cards onto your own mansion, with the ultimate goal being to collect points for building certain combinations of rooms decided by randomly selected cards.

As is often the case though, early playtesting quickly turned up problems with this design. A clear dominant strategy became apparent, which the randomization of which people cards were available did little to hinder, and beyond that, the primary deck-building mechanic just wasn't very fun as it was. I realized after a few iterations that I simply didn't have enough time or experience to work out the balance in a satisfying way, but there was one silver lining: the seconday mansion-building mechanic was interesting, with the main problem being that players weren't getting to interact with it enough. Instead of struggling through a design I wasn't sure I could make interesting, I ended up leaving the deck-building on the cutting room floor and pivoting into a new design that would better leverage what I knew I could make feel engaging.

By allowing players to engage with the mansion-building mechanic every single turn, shifting to a single shared mansion, and layering a strategic game of area control on top of it, I immediately saw more positive responses from playtesters. I believe this single decision to let go of an idea and change directions ultimately led me to a better game than I would have made otherwise, one that I might even decide to develop further in the future.