Psychic Wizard Duel
A board game about reading your opponent’s mind
Board Game Design
This board game was my Senior Capstone project, my final and most important project in college. I designed a board game over the summer of my freshman year and wanted to bring things full circle by designing another one with everything I’ve learned over my college career.
The game idea started as a zoo building game but evolved as I changed and developed the rules and idea.
Some early playtesting to make sure the mechanics were fun and smooth before going into the artwork and graphic design.
Core Game Mechanics
Open Information
Every hand, there is a short window where players can see each other’s cards, taking note of what cards they have and trying to predict their plays is important to winning.
Simultaneous Turns
Instead of the classic back and forth of games, turns happen by having each player secretly deciding on a card to play, then revealing them at the same time.
Balance
The goal of the game is not to reach an end, or get the highest score, but instead to end rounds with their tokens close to the middle, this “sweet spot” shrinks as players get closer to winning.
Card Interaction
Cards can interact, canceling, doubling, or reacting to eachother, further increasing player interaction and making knowing your opponent even more important.
Cards
There are currently 51 cards in the game, 45 spell cards and 6 character cards.
Each turn both players are given 3 random spells to choose from, both player’s cards are laid out and are given 30 seconds to analyze their opponent’s cards. At the end of this time each player takes their 3 cards back then they each choose one spell to play and which direction to play it. These chosen spells are revealed at the same time and their effects are calculated.
Board
The board is a hexagon that is reminiscent of the card. I spoke with some user interface designers about layout and hierarchy as board games are all about communicating ideas quickly and effectively, like a website or app.
Later Playtesting
Once the rulebook was completed it was important to have people do some blind playtesting to ensure that the average player could figure it out.
