A board game about creating a dungeon and invading your opponents dungeons.
Dungeon Heart
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Quick disclaimer about the assets found within Dungeon Heart: All of the art + card frames were found online. This project was not sold commercially. The mechanics of the game, how the assets are arranged and anything that essentially isn’t the art on the cards/rulebook are all designed intentionally by me.
Dungeon Heart is a competitive dungeon building game for 2 to 4 players. Each player takes on the role of a magical dungeon core whose sole goal is to construct the best underground haven for all manner of creature. With the backing of one of many powerful patrons, you will stock your dungeon with rooms that give you resources or monsters.
I designed Dungeon Heart after a weekend playing games like Dungeon Keeper and Dungeons 3, and I was thinking how best to port it into the form of a board game. The end product was this long, epic board game that was a good time - if not just a tad convoluted and long winded.
Playtesting an early version of the game
I was really excited to playtest my game the first time, but that’s when I learned that the first playtest usually has many more misses rather than hits. I scrapped a good portion of the game mechanics that served to only bloat the playtime, and had to trim down other ideas that I thought were interesting, but just weren’t fun.
Playtesting this game was a really good experience, and taught me how important it was to get a second, third, and fourth opinion on your game design. I think the most difficult part of playtesting was figuring out whether I should trust my design instincts, or go with a suggestion one of the playtesters made.
The cards above are the room and unit cards that you would populate your dungeon with. I wanted to make it as flavourful as possible, but balancing flavour and gameplay was more difficult than I initially thought it’d be.
One of the more difficult parts of the process was crafting the rulebook for the game. It was a time crunch to design the game and come out with a set of comprehensive rules in the span of a few months.
Here’s a link to the 34-page rulebook, if you’d like to take a look!