I made a board game prototype
Battles Beneath the Stars is still not a video game
In place of the usual edition of ‘Let Me Talk To You About,’ I’m doing a broader post for the entire publication that should also interest readers of Battles Beneath the Stars and people who like board games. Please forgive the disruption to the normal posting schedule.
Over the recent weekend I took part in a game jam, a type of event where people have to make a game within the time limit. Which in this case was a single weekend, it was intended as a casual event to just get something made quick, the only rule being that it had to feature direct competition between players.
For my entry I decided to do a board game version of Battles Beneath the Stars, which I titled Battles Beneath the Stars: Tabletop Brawls.
My objective going in was to at minimum write out the rules, make at least two playable fighters, and a single hexmap arena with a hazard. I met the minimum but did not go beyond that. Although, while I had written all the text needed for each card used in the game to function, I hadn’t actually made them into cards.
Still, with the disclaimer of much assembly being required, the game is playable and can be downloaded here: https://itch.io/jam/versus-game-jam/rate/2960013
Designing this game started with trying and failing to keep the ideas from working on themselves in my head before the jam officially started, then once it began writing down all of those ideas in a document to get them recorded. Then I began to write them in a more organized fashion for others to read.
The core interaction of the game is when both players select a card from their hand of six and place it face down. Both players reveal their cards and then resolve them, but there are many situations in which cards prevent other cards from performing their effects based on different factors. You need to play cards when you think they’ll be allowed to actually take effect.
I based this system on Versus Tag Shuffle, a board game made by a friend that also adapts fighting game mechanics to board game format. But mine draws heavily on platform fighters, the Smash Bros style of fighting game, so a lot more emphasis is given to movement and the arena itself, with gameplay happening on a hexmap.
Next focus was on making the characters, mainly by giving each a special action and their own set of cards. I chose to adapt Aodh and Hyperion to this format, designing Aodh to be balanced around dealing both damage and knockback, while Hyperion is specialized towards winning by ringing out the enemy.
When visualizing the playfield I imagined Heroscape style interlocking tiles that could be stacked, letting you create varied arenas with mixed elevation. I love the diversity of stages in Smash Bros so this system helps translate that. Though there was only time to design one.
Creating the stage was the part of the design that pushed me the most, since I had little experience with hexmaps. Thankfully I found an extension for Inkscape meant for making hexmaps, and after Inkscape crashed about thirty times I had my stage. I focused on creating one around the boardgame rules instead of translating a stage from main Battles Beneath the Stars.
Hazards are another element I wanted to translate over. I decided to have a ‘Hazard Track’ that would progress each turn and trigger different effects. The only hazard in the prototype is an exploding flower hazard, which is triggered at set points on the Hazard Track at set locations, but which point triggers which location is randomized via the magic of facedown shuffling.
While this is certainly not balanced since I didn’t have time to playtest it, I feel what I have could be considered a prototype to build off of in the future. After I finish Battles Beneath the Stars proper that is. Regardless, it was fun to have time set aside to try my hand at something new, and I’d appreciate hearing from anyone who takes a look at it.
I’d also like to close this by encouraging you to try out the other jam submissions as well, which include a video game, two other tabletop games, and a game where you argue about which superpower would win in a fight.