Fire Emblem:
The Boardgame
2022
Personal
Year:
Project Type:
Overview
I created a prototype board game in collaboration with an amateur board game designer. It is loosely themed on the video game Fire Emblem: Three Houses.
My partner pitched me on the gameplay, and I created the visuals and physical media used to play. This version was made specifically for play-testing and iterating.
For fun, I chose to make everything by hand. I built the boards, boxes, and pieces from scratch, and hand-painted everything.
The Design
The game is a deck-builder where two players each create a deck from 40 available cards, then spend 7 turns playing those cards to 3 lanes on a board. You win a lane by having more powerful pieces than your opponent, and whoever wins 2 or more lanes wins the game.
I designed 7 distinct suit symbols, and made each visually distinct while leaving room to write, erase, and rewrite abilities. For the three lanes, I chose to paint them as different terrains, representing three battlefields in a larger war. I also hand crafted a box to hold the cards, number tokens, and soldier tokens, and a dial to track the turn number.
The Outcome
The game was play-tested many times using the prototype I built, and was improved to the point that we play it just for fun!
