River Rafters
Prim8z
DESCRIPTION
River Rafters is a board game aimed for a younger audience where the players have to sail down a river and be the first to cross the finish line without their ship sinking. This was a design focused project made with 3 other Designers. Our main priority with this was iterating with many different iterations of the game being present throughout its development cycle.
I was responsible for the production of the physical board and many of the pieces. I was also heavily involved in the playtesting both suggesting and making balance and optimisations to the game as we developed.
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Our unique mechanic was our Action Cards allowing the players to balance the randomness of the dice by affecting other players movement or giving themselves a boost.
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Players also had health, being able to take damage from the rocks on the path or other player's action cards.
GENRE
Party, Strategy,
Board Game
PLATFORM
Board Game
Status
Complete
Board Production
The board was a central focus of our game as we relied on it heavily to allow the player to process the information they needed and what they could do based on where they were on the board. We also wanted to make this part more engaging for younger audiences while introducing variety at the same time. This lead us to a tile base system where the map would be formed out of Corner and Straight pieces. This worked really well but needed a lot of clarification both within the rules and to players.
We focused on balancing these boards, making sure they didn't hinder the game or make it too frustrating to traverse. Changes we made to ensure this include:
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Widening the board (3 lanes -> 4 lanes)
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Removal of some rocks (3 rocks per tile -> 2 rocks per tile)
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Overhaul of our corner pieces
The overhaul of our corner pieces was vital to making the ranges on our Action cards work, making it easier to read on both the board and on the card itself. We were also able to preserve the nature of the original lanes with a new tile type that + 1 to your current dice roll when touching it.​
Old
New
Other Pieces I made Include:
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Spinner
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Start/Finish pieces
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Hex Pieces
Play testing
We paid a lot of attention to balance for our game while we iterated. We played the game every week to understand where the power lied between our action card and to test any potential changes we made to the game. As mentioned previously, one of those things we spotted in testing was that 3 lanes felt too restrictive. Other noticeable changes we caught only due to playtesting was:
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The range we could use placeables
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the strength of the tidal spinner
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The action cost of our cards
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This led to a game that is in a better state then if we didn't test it so much. While the cards are still not equal, each still has a use case and aren't dead weight in a player's hand. It also helped make sinking still feel like an impactful hinderance without completely removing the player from being in the running to win.
Rule Book
The board was a central focus of our game as we relied on it heavily to allow the player to process the information they needed and what they could do based on where they were on the board. We also wanted to make this part more engaging for younger audiences while introducing variety at the same time. This lead us to a tile base system where the map would be formed out of Corner and Straight pieces. This worked really well but needed a lot of clarification both within the rules and to players.