"What if a board game map could be borderless?"
Overview
"Ronghua" / Velvet is a 2-4 player card-strategy board game. An infinite canvas will be the playground as it implements a 3D environment, a 2v/3v geodesic sphere that contains 80/180 grids in total, into the gameplay. Players will ideally have a thoughtful experience competing and cooperating throughout the gameplay using cards and character skills to conquer as many grids as they can with their chosen color. When the available grids are all conquered, players with the most grid points would win. Each grid will, by then, grow a 3D velvet flower according to the previous result, hence the players are working together to create an art piece each match on this infinite earth.
Featuring the "Four Noble Ones", "梅" Plum Blossom, "兰" the Orchid, "竹" the Bamboo, and "菊" the Chrysanthemum, Velvet aims to create a colorful journey for its players, highlighting the traditional virtues and the unique craft culture of "绒花", The Velvet Flowers, in China.
Trailer
Video made by Lijie/Jane Liu
Music credit to the online source:
"Jonny Easton - Purpose" is under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) license
Music promoted by BreakingCopyright: https://bit.ly/b-purpose
Visual Design
"品红", Pin Hong, #f00056 "藤萝", Teng Luo, #8076a3 "竹青", Zhu Qing, #789262 "缃色", Xiang Se, #f0c239
Accessibility Design
Velvet is a game that feasts aesthetical pleasure during the gameplay since colors work as an essential part of this game. Therefore, we take into consideration of the underrepresented group that has difficulties reading the colors.
We used the ColorADD Codes to represent each color in a recognizable shape. For future designs, we will also take a black-and-white version/touch/hear assistance into account if applicable.
Playable Prototype
empty map model
occupied map model
Currently, I imported the geodesic ball model from Nomad and painted it on the surface UV in Procreate App for the convenience of rapid iteration. Future models might be built in mainstream game engines.
Playtest 11/06/2022
Player: 2, with a D6
Map: 3v Geodesic ball with 180 grids
Hand deck: 12
Venue cards: 3
Duration: 2 hours 30 minutes
Location: my apartment
Platform: digital map, Procreate on iPad
and sticker cards
Things to change in the next iteration:
The game time is relatively too long (it took us more than 2 hours to finish the map) to keep the attention span if two players are playing on a 3v ball. If the "flourish" area could be occupied for infinite times, the game would end up with people fighting for this resource area forever. The two-player map will then be limited to a 2v geodesic ball with only 80 grids.
The map could not indicate the player's current location due to its platform limitation. To fix this and make it still available to play and test on Procreate, I have marked each grid with a number. If others occupy a player's current standing grid, the player will be moved to the nearest grid with the same color.
Players were allowed to use and refill their hands infinitely during the first playtest. This mechanic is problematic because it weakens the power of the special abilities to teleport or "flourish." Strategic thinking was discouraged when players didn't have to consider which hands could be valuable to save for the next round. In the next iteration, the number of hands will be limited, and the number of each unique ability will be adjusted for a better game balance.
Inspirations and References
Mei, Plum Blossom
Lan, Orchid
Zhu, Bamboo
Juu, Crysanthemum
