Lands

~ This project is a work in progress ~

Inspired by this tiny 3D-printed castle, I've decided to try creating a unique board game where players explore a board by placing down randomly-chosen environment tiles. It turns out it's pretty difficult to design a brand-new board game that balances fun and complexity, so this project involves a lot of trial and error, as well as patient friends and family, since I need to play the game many times to understand how to fix it.

Set on a 1x1 inch base, the castle made me imagine a game of 3D-printed or laser-cut tiles placed next to each other to create a mini world

My first prototype is made of cardboard, of course. It gives me flexibility with changing the pieces, is readily available (Costco stores have a lot of cardboard sheets they're happy to get rid of). Though it was a pain to cut hundreds of square-inch tiles out, I've been happy for the flexibility of cardboard and drawn-on symbols now that I've changed the rules of my game repeatedly.

These are the first and second attempts at playing the game. The first was cut extremely short once I realized few of my rules would work the way I expected.

At this stage of development, my game is a bit of a mess. It involves two different types of tokens, colored pins, 400 environment tiles and over 50 special tiles which are all kept in a drawstring bag, farm tiles, 3 kinds of population tiles, and 3 different values of food tokens. Oh, and a colored die. And a chart to remind players how much food each item costs. And a numbered board and extra token to keep track of the food each player makes per turn.

Stacks of environment tiles

Population tiles

Pins and some tiles

LandsTimelapse01

A time lapse of some pieces being engraved into cardboard, to be cut out afterwards

In progress

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