Cameron Thomson-Game Designer
Battleground
Battleground is a solo university project in which i made a very rough concept for an original board game. There is no artwork for this project as i was focusing on my ability to create and balance game mechanics and win conditions.
Introduction
When creating battleground i had some clear goals in mind. I wanted to make a combat based board game that didn't require the players to spend hours setting it up or having to do multiple calculations for moving a piece. I also wanted the combat to be quick and not require the players to have to keep track of each individual game pieces health. I took inspiration from three main points. The historical game of chess. The table top game Warhammer and the role playing game of Dungeons and Dragons. I use the aspects of these games that i liked and thought would be beneficial to help create my game and meet the criteria i set myself.
First Attempt
The image to the right shows the layout of the first version of Battleground. In this version the players would need to move their pieces across the board into the enemies base zone( shown by the coloured rectangles) . There were also two items called power ore (shown by the blue circles) the player could fight to collect. Once a player was in the opponents base zone they had to roll dice (the amount of dice corresponding to the amount of pieces they had in the zone). The players had to roll a certain number to score a hit. They had to score several hits to win the game. The power ore gave the player who collected it a large advantage. However upon playtesting i found several flaws with this version. Firstly the game lasted far too long, i was aiming for a game which lasted 30-40 minutes. This version was played for over an hour and neither player had made any progress. Furthermore, the power ore mechanic was far too complicated and did not work as intended. Obviously i had not achieved what i wanted to went back to the drawing board and worked on the next version.
Version Two
Upon reviewing the problems with the first version, i found that i needed to change the win condition of the game. The previous win condition was practically unachievable so i went with a new way of playing the game. I changed the win condition to capture the flag. The players would have to collect the flag and return it to their base zone to score a point. Three points to win. i also updated the board to have clearly laid out zones for the players "hands" and the players discard piles/ graveyards (shown in the image on the left). I also updated the rules to suit the game mode better. When testing of the new version began i saw a dramatic improvement. The game was able to be set up and plaid to victory in the timeframe i was aiming for and the players found it easier to understand the improved rules. While this version was a definite improvement i noticed that some of the game pieces were far more effective than others so i had to make more changes.
The finished version
Upon making changes to the game pieces i was ready to hand in Battlegrounds for my university project. I had changed some of the statistics and tested it and found that the game played very well.
​
To the right you will find, the Battlegrounds instruction video and PowerPoint for playing the game. There is also my development Journal for a deeper look into the process of making the game
​
Battleground PowerPoint
Development Journal