Beetle Battle

Beetle Battle is a board game where players take turns playing cards to move their beetle in hopes of pushing their opponent's beetle off of the board. I drew inspiration from the Japanese tradition of school kids collecting kabutomushi (rhinoceros beetles) and pitting them in fights against each other. The central game loop involves both players playing cards and moving their beetle. If the two beetles ever share the same space on the game board, then a fight breaks out! 

I really enjoyed making the prototypes for this game, using my origami skills to make beetle pieces and the board from origami paper. I also designed 7 different cards in Adobe llustrator to act as different actions for the players to take. I mixed in offensive and defensive options, but given the deck-style of gameplay, drawing the right cards became more reliant on RNG. Players also had counterplay by holding on to cards their opponents could want, lowering the odds of their opponents finding additional copies of those cards.

I playtested this game several times with various friends and classmates, iterating everything from card balance to system design each week. If you're curious about the design process in more details, here's a link to the Design Journal for more of my internal findings as well as the thought process behind certain mechanics and design choices.

I've attached the PDFs to the cards and rulebook below. Feel free to download them and try it out with a homemade board and pieces of your own!