Extraction
Compete with friends in this survival boardgame. Use aggression, careful planning, co-operation and betrayal to become the ultimate survivor.
Team / Duration: 5 / 7 Weeks
Genre: Non-digital, Surival Boardgame
Focus: Boardgame design & production
Role: Map & Printout creator, Co-Mechanic Designer
Engine: None
Purpose: University BSc Project (2018)
Software Used: Unity, Adobe illustrator, Github (Source Control), Microsoft Office
About
Download Rule Sheet:
This was a university project made by a team of 5 designed to focus on delivering pure mechanics and practice balancing a games systems in order to deliver fair and enjoyable gameplay.
Extraction is a 3 – 6 Player Social Strategic Zombie Survival boardgame where the players must navigate their way around the board, looting the different locations, trading or fighting with other players whilst trying their hardest not to starve to death or be eaten by the horde. The game was based off games such as Day-Z or State of Decay, where you had to be resourceful whilst trying to look out for other people and the zombie nightmares.
The aim of the game is to try and be the last one alive so you can go for EXTRACTION!
I mainly worked on creating the map for the game, balancing damage and designing the printouts & rule sheet.
Download Printouts & Play Now!
The Brief
The task was to create a board game from scratch with little to no RNG mechanics.
We were split into teams and given a little time to come up with an initial idea, this was then fed back to the lecturers in order to have a firm grasp on the direction we would take the game.
At the end of development the game would be presented to the lecturers and an experienced professional board game developer with the added pressure of showing them the physical verison (made of placeholder tokens and print outs).
Idea Crafting
We at first looked at inspiration for the game and bounced between ideas, we knew we wanted to make a card game but what type. We were inspired by the video game This War of Mine (11 bit studios, 2014) to create a post-apocalyptic survival game, although there are no zombies in This War of Mine there is the loot and hunger system which fit perfectly with a board game setting. This led us to the survival theme for the game.
The project was made by 5 people and we all designed mechanics and the main core gameplay. Afterwards my main role was to design the map layout & print-outs for the game and to balance the weapon and food values.
​
We tried to create a large variety of mechanics and metrics within our board game without making it too complicated. First we designed the basis which our game relied on, this was a concept of being the last player alive. Then we created an inventory system and items that you would use to help survive, a selection of weapons and food, the former to cause damage to other players, and the latter to heal whenever you took damage from other players, the horde or from hunger.
Once we had finished and had all of our necessary assets created, we played multiple rounds to test and balance the systems, ultimately coming to a mostly balanced and enjoyable boardgame experience.