Board Game – Lost in the woods : this is your story – Creation process

By jjeromegerstch

Lost in the woods: this is your story is a story telling game.
Players participate to the story by weaving a story based on the card they drawn. the results of the actions of the players is based on the dice roll.

Context

This was my first assignment as a game designer at Artline Institute.

I started with the constrains stated below :
. Create a little game
. Theme: Forest
. Use no more than:
– 5 dices
– 12 cards
– As many tokens as you want

Step 1: Brainstorming

I started by doing a solo brainstorming around the theme and the constrains. Acter 1 hour of thinking, I got a hundred proposal to target a first game idea.

The brainstorming was oriented around 3 axes:

1. The theme: Forest
   What does a forest evokes to me ?
   What is in a forest ?
   What can we do in a forest ?
   What is the pop culture representation of a forest ?
   What ideal use of a forest ?
   
2. The Hardware
   What can we do with dices ?
   What can we do with cards ?
   What can we do with Tokens ?
   
3. The games
   What type of board games do I know ?
   

Step 2: Extract game ideas

A total of 5 game ideas came from this brainstorming.

• A reflex based assembly game for children where each player has a different hut to build with materials that are disposed at the center of the table in a manner that everyone can’t have enough at the same time.
• A little challenge game with actions to perform to win nuts. Each player gives a challenge to another one and takes the nut from the player if he wins.
• A growing forest strategy game where each player has to make his tree bigger than the other.
• A conquest game based on dexterity where each player will try to win cards placed on the table by launching tokens that have to stay on those cards
• A storytelling game where each player contributes to the story by weaving a part of it based on a card indication and a dice throw result.

I decided to keep the storytelling game because it was the game that i knew i’ll be able to achieve in the small amount of time I had (2 weeks).
Furthermore, I had to find play testers and I knew that this game will resonate with my friends tastes.

Step 3: Make a mind map

Step 4: Make a prototype and rules – corrective loop

A game has to be played, and to play a game, we need a prototype. I started directly with a little tool called Card Creator available here.

The cards have a simple layout and no fancy graphics but are clean enough to let players play with it without questions asked. I kept numerical values blank to be able to balance the game later and to adjust it after each playtest.

Those values where fixed after a dozen of playtests to fit in the two weeks schedule.

Step 5: Finalize

After fixing the values and reorganizing the rule book, the game was ready to be finalized.

Here is the full rulebook (in french) for you to see.