Die Minen des Ambossbergs
4 player cooperative card game made for my university module "Project: Analogue Game"
Documentation is work in progress
01/2024 - 03/2024
Game Design & Art
Powerpoint & Paint
1
On Request
Description: This was the first game I created and the only analogue game I created so far. In this project my task was to develop an physical game from start to finish. I could choose between a card or board game. I chose a card game and from there on started developing the game world and visuals, developing the mechanics, creating a prototype, testing that prototype with friends, finetuning mechanics and lastly printing and assembling the physical copy of the game with my planned designs. In the end I was quite happy with the results
Story: The game is set in a fantasy world. You play as a group of dwarf adventures that got stuck in an old mine looking for treasures. You need to use the gear you can find in coordination with your team to defeat enemies and escape the mine.
Gameplay/Features: Your goal is to play your cards in coordination with your team to defeat waves of enemies. Each player starts with a classe, that gets a bonus when playing certain kinds of cards. During the game each player has a hand of cards and everyone plays one card per turn against the enemies on the table. Each card has a effect like dealing damage, blocking damage oder healing the players. Players try to coordinate their cards to defeat enemies all while staying alive.
Workflow: The project was seperated into three phases. In phase 1, the concept phase, I defined genre and mapped competitors, distilled core and secondary mechanics into a playable prototype stage 1, chose a preliminary target audience, and created a moodboard plus 1–3 visual and setting options. I also did early playtests and created a prototype rulebook to validate the basic design. In phase 2, the development and reflection phase, I built a target persona and a fun/frustration list to guide adjustments, refined rules and mechanics, selected final art and setting directions, and confirmed key metrics (like win rates, playtime, value curves). Additionally, I updated the components and rulebook into a prototype stage 2 and ran structured playtests with metric tracking. Lastly, in phase 3 I finalized the game by closing rule gaps, balancing rewards and pacing against the chosen KPIs, applying the final visual language and narrative across all assets, and producing a physical, fully playable prototype with a printed rulebook and a product presentation PDF.
Key takeaways: Producing a complete game is a lot of work. Managing all parts of the game and making sure that everything fits and is consistent over all aspects needs a lot of finetuning, eye for detail and persistence. Also, early and frequent testing is hard to organize but pays off big time, if you do it correctly. For mechanics it is sometimes important to remember that it is not always good to have too many too complex systems, even if you think that they are all great and definitely need to be in your game. Lastly producing a prototype physical prototype was a lot more work than I thought but it is a greate feeling when you can finally hold your finished game in your hands.
What I would do better next time: Take more time to test and develop the mechanics and balancing. This was hard to do because I also had to do all the other work in the fixed timeframe. I think the game works fine but it can be a bit overwhelming and rough around the edges at times, especially for new players. I would have loved to make the game more beginner friendly as it is supposed to be a relaxing cooperative experience for everyone.
The full course documentation for the game can be requested. However, it is only available in German.