Factory Wars
Duration
Jan 2022 - May 2022
Platform:
Physical
Engine:
N/a
Team Size:
Solo
Genre
Turn based Card Game
Role:
Designer
Summary
Factory Wars is a feature-complete board game I designed to completion. 2-4 Player board game where the player build robots to fight each other. Whoever destroys the other persons factory wins.
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My Contribution
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Created the games concept.
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Build upon the game concepts by making mechanics and parts.
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Write an comprehensive rule book.
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Oversaw multiple prototypes and play tested them.
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Iterated on the design based on results from the playtests.
Designing the systems
I started with the concept and made a treatment of the game. In this document it has the game’s name, # of players, minimum age, expected play, target audience, list of necessary components, game end condition and victory condition.
With necessary components finished I started the ideation process. I took the concept and started to expand out the core mechanics.
Since the Victory condition is to destroy your opponent's factory with your robots.
This requires an destructible factory.
So I made a factory with a health bar that once decreased will even be destroyed then I gave the robots an attack value that can be used to diminish the factory's health.
I also had to give Robots an resource gathering value so the player can gather resources to construct more robots.
This also requires robots to have some sort of indicator to communicate to the player their resource cost. Now, that is talking about resources. Why should the player choose 1 resource over another?
One resource is sturdier than the other. Then why would the player ever choose a weaker resource? The weaker resource is less sturdier but faster as a result. There is a cost and benefit for choosing one over another. Since Factory Wars is a card game, I had to put these stats onto the card. The image on the right is the first rendition of Robot cards. I later refer to these as "Blueprints" for thematic purposes. Throughout development I polished the cards design alongside tweaking the mechanics in response to information gathered from playtests.
Since Factory Wars is an card game, I had to put these stats onto card. The image on the right is the first rendition of Robot cards.
I later refer to these as "Blueprints" for thematic purposes.
Throughout development I polished the cards design alongside tweaking the mechanics in response to information gather from playtests.
As you see on slide deck on the left. You can see the progression​
of the design of the card. I started to section off the different stats to make it more clear what each section meant. I increased the size of the boxes and elements due to some feedback I received that the cards elements were hard to see.
Factory wars takes inspiration from wind up robot toys. I wanted to mimic the feeling of winding up a robot and watch it march off. I wanted to make the robots feel robotic.
With this concept in mind I planned how this operates in game. Originally, I was planning to have the player create robots and decide whether or not they move direction or another.
The character moves in a straight line but this comes at the cost of player control. I want players to be able to strategize with their robots. Without having complete control of their movement.
I wanted it to have a windup feeling but without sacrificing player strategy.
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"Execution Card": Up
An simple command to your Robot that tells it to go 1 space up on the board.
The solution I came up with was Execution cards. To move the robot the player must place a series of cards facing down. Going from the left to right position. The chosen robot will move according to it. Each one of the cards has a direction. The robot will move according sequence of directions. This mimics feeling of robot follow orders. Going from one order to another. Slowly marching.
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However, this did cause some issues later on. I had some physical constraints with this being a board game.
I had limited amount of execution and and it was not sustainable the more robots were added to field.
To fix this issues I added an limit to amount robots that the player can move per turn. This did make 4 players work but they were still issues I discovered with playtest.
Playtest Iteration
When I play tested this game, I would have set of questions or a mechanic that I was playtesting at that moment. I would actively listen and notice any confusion the player had while playing the game.
I found playtesting to be very insightful since I found many problems that I didn't think of originally.
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Execution Cards problems
The "execution cards" had many changes throughout the game. Originally, they weren't even cards. They were meant to be tokens you placed. However, they were complication in making them. I decided to make them into cards since they were easier format to create. The way player access the execution cards changed throughout development. Originally they were all 1 pile and it was up to luck whether or not the player gets an card they want. This wasn't intended so I decided to simply allow the players to shift through the pile for the cards they wanted. This however felt clunky, so I eventually divided them into based on function. The players would simply pull from the piles for the card that they wanted. This was resulted in a cleaner phase.
Another problem was that I didn't have enough executions cards. The more people there are in the game. The less cards are to go around and this caused problem with people not getting cards they need. This was more materials problem but I think potential solution would be have cards they can perform more than 1 function.
Instead of having each card have 1 option. Each one has 2. This allows player to choose which action they want the card to choose. Meaning the players have more options for cards without the need to print more cards.
Length and engagement problems