PIGBUILDERS
A cooperative board game on the theme of the big bad wolf
Category : Board game
Role : Game Designer
Duration : 5 weeks
Presentation :
Pigbuilders is a board game that I was able to create as a group. This game was created as part of an exercise during my training. We had several constraints that we had to respect.
The game had to have perfect information, that is to say that all the players had to have access to the same information at all times. The game also had to be cooperative and accessible to children between 8 and 10 years old.
We chose to start with the theme of the three little pigs and the big bad wolf, which is a well-known story adapted for a family audience.
Players take turns to play and the goal of the game is to collect the resources needed to build the house before the big bad wolf arrives.
Players move around the board with a die and have to go to the different resource locations and bring them back to the house.
They have to watch out for the wolves that are also moving around and will capture players at the slightest opportunity if it is dark.
At certain times, players will come across event boxes and draw cards to spice up the game.
My work within the group
Pigbuilders was a very collaborative project where the entire group participated in the majority of design decisions.
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Most of the rules of the game have thus been established by several people. However, I participated a lot in the development of the game board.
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It was necessary to define the length of the paths so that when playing with a six die, the players take an average of two turns to reach the first resource space, three turns for the second and four for the third.
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It was also necessary to place the different game elements that had been decided. In particular the locations of event boxes.
They had to be frequent enough to have an impact on the game without being too present, which would have made the game completely chaotic.
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The other contextual elements such as the rockslide locations, the bridge and the lever that lowers it also had to be placed in strategic places.
For example, the lever that controls the bridge is not placed in the path leading to the bridge in order to force players to cooperate to activate the bridge.
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Finally, we had to place the location of the wolves' den and the hunter's house.
The den should not be placed too close to the house so that players cannot be released too easily.
This is why the hunter's house which is placed closer offers an alternative to free the players, but requires spending resources.
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Taking all these elements into account, we obtain the table below:
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Another part of the project that I worked on a lot is the design of the event cards.
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Event cards are divided into two categories: classic event cards, in black, and major event cards, in red.
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The black cards are drawn by the players when they land on the event spaces. They can have positive or negative effects, affect one or all players, and have a moderate impact on the game.
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Red cards are all large negative events. They affect all players and can have a drastic impact on the rest of the game.
These cards are drawn on turns seven, fourteen, and twenty-one. There are therefore never more than three in a game.
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Below are all the different cards present in the game:
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