Star Wars Bounties Board Game

About the game

 For our chosen board game, we discussed different genres we are all interested in such as different movies and shows and see if we could base a game off one of the. We came to the conclusion to create a Star Wars - based board game as that was one franchise we were all interested in. Our ideas for what the star wars board game would be about changed a few times as we came up with different ideas over the week. 

Original ideas

Our first idea was to make a Star Wars board game where players would go around a space themed board which would've included a bunch of different planets around the board which players would go to collect recourses to be able to build our own space colonies. However, we then decided to change it up to make it bounty hunter themed Star Wars game. In this board game, players would move around the map to different planets and collect different bounties, depending on the bounty card you select. Each player has a starting piece along with 150,000 Credits. The player uses a 1 D6 to move and if a player lands on a Bounty square, they must pick up a bounty card from the top of the deck place. If a player lands on a bounty requirement square , they must choose a bounty requirement card from the top of the deck and place it in front of them.. We also added event cards called space events where if a player lands on an event square, they need to pick up an event card from the top of the deck and then read what its says, then the player would have to do whatever the card says. For example, one of the space events was the ability to use the force to be able to push back another player five spaces. After testing this version of the game, we realized that this version was a bit too simple as the majority of the game relied on rolling a dice and picking a bounty card, then if the player had the right tool requirement for that specific bounty, they would then be able to claim it straight away and it would become the next players turn. The space event cards were also quite rare as the first board we designed had a lot of blank spaces, so it wouldn't be so often a player would claim an event card. So because of this, not much was happening throughout the game which made it seem quite slow and dull at times. 

Final idea 

After that, we decided to change up the game again by adding other mechanics to make the gameplay more enjoyable for the players. We still stuck to creating a Star Wars bounty themed game, but with a few more interesting mechanics. Some of the new mechanics Daniel came up with included: Open and personal bounties, bounties that the player would have to claim at an outpost on the board, a trading system so players could trade bounty's and weapons, character abilities and a shop system. Daniel started designing the game board to make it look more like a Star Wars themed board by adding different planets from the films and some star ships roaming around the map. I helped designing the bounty cards and I also designed the tool cards and space event cards. Each tool card included a different weapon or item such as blasters, lightsabers, detonators etc. And the item its says on the bounty card would be the required item the player would need to claim the bounty. Ethan designed more detailed bounty cards. Since I was the most well knowledged about Star Wars out of the three of us, I also helped by writing down notes about certain Star Wars characters as the characters needed small descriptions, summarizing the character and their weapons/abilities. We also created our own rule book summarizing the basic rules for the game.

Game rules 

At the start of the game, players had to pick a corner of the board to place their playing pieces on. Everyone is given 150K Credits to start with which players need to work towards building up during the game by completing as many bounties as possible. If you are not on a planet/ Star Destroyer, you must move. However, you do have the option to stay where you are if your already on a planet or a Star Destroyer. Players have to roll a 2xd6. There are also different tokens to collect such as: Shop, event, IE Data core, bounty hunter and money tokens. For example, with shop tokens, you can pick three tool cards from the top of the tool card deck. If you want to buy one, you spend the amount of credits the tool card is worth, then put the other ones at the bottom of the card deck. Some of these cards include passive abilities that players can use. When it comes to battling in this game, if you move  into another playing piece, you can take one of their tool cards from them and half their cash. The board also includes tie fighter tokens in a corner of the map which players can choose to move around. If a tie fighter is moved into you or if you move into one, all the cards you have claimed return to their card decks. Another aspect of the board is an asteroid field. If you are on a square in the Asteroid field, you get -4 from your movement rolls (if you have rolled 4 or less you cant move at all) For the bounties, there are two types, Open and private bounties. Open bounties are the ones that are always face up for everyone to see and complete. Private bounties are bounties that are face down next to you so only you can complete them. If a player has six private bounties in front of them, they lose the game as no bounties are being completed by them. 

The game includes a couple of ways to win. One way is by collecting 7 million credits from your bounties. The other way to win is if other layers are knocked out the game and you are the last bounty hunter surviving. 

How well did we work as a team?

When it came to working as a team, I think in the end we were able to work well as a team as we were always discussing different ideas we could include in our game and each of us had enough to work on and participate with so one person wasn't doing all the work. However, there were times where we forgot to communicate with each other and we were working individually, so we didn't always know what we had to make for the game or didn't know what the other person had already done. At the end, I was happy with how the final product came out as I think it was playable enough for players and it was enjoyable enough with the mechanics we included. Also I think it was a much of a better improvement to our original idea as our original game was a very simple board game with not that many interesting mechanics not including the dice. Our final version definitely had more fun and interesting concepts and mechanics so it wouldn't get so bland throughout the game.