Zviezda
In every group work in the world, there is almost no example of people actually working with equal output. There are different reasons for this – bad mood on the particular day, or lack of experience. In the situations like this, people either help or sabotage each other. Many games are driven by the second option, and just like in free-market, eliminating competition, aiming for one-winner situation. In this game however, winning is not based on eliminating others, but rather cooperating towards victory, and winning alone is not the case.
Collaborator / Client:
School Project
Technology & Materials:
Paper cards, laser-cut plywood tokens
Year & Place:
2023, Kolding, Denmark
Development
Starting point
How you can help others win without expecting anything in return? When the game would end if it’s not last-man-standing scenario? These questions gave me ideas for first set of rules, which could be described as reverse monopoly scenario.
Process
In the game your aim is to collect certain amount of positive poitns, watching out on the negative ones. The most rewarding avtivities are those in which you are helping others gain some points. Collecting certain amount of points can give you rewards or punishments. The game ends when one or more of the players reaches the highest amount of points.
After writing the rules and testing the basic mechanics with low-fidelity prototype and adjusting output from testing group, the time has come to focus on the aesthetic aspect of the game. Because of the resemblence to the closed-market economy system and socialist character of the collaboration based on giving away what you have earned throughout the game I decided to set the game theme as Soviet construction office.
Early prototype testing
Final prototype testing
Result
Final project
Main element that actually makes the game is deck of cards, with which you can get points, transfer them to others, steal cards and get disrupted by random events. Due to very limited time I used A.I. generated art as artworks on cards
Except for cards, the game set containts different tokes. Progress – resembled by a star and Attention resembled by an eye. By colecting them, the players can get medals or attention points. Another important tokens are Voting tokens, which can be used to block the players action or to help them during end of round. All tokens are made of laser-cut plywood.
There are 4 scenarios of ending the game depending on how you have played.
Cards
Tokens
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