CD Party
CD Party is a 4 player local co-op and online party game heavily inspired by the Mario Party franchise. 4 Players will go head to head in this crazy party game, featuring whacky minigames, boards with unique items and encounters, and more.
We began the project by defining our design pillars which were:
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Variety - minigames can extend across a large genre of themes, mechanics, and gameplay
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Cheese Dynamics - Boards and minigames to be inspired by our previous projects
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Unique Gimmicks - Each board of the game is to feature unique occurrences, themes, and items to give purpose to playing on a board.
With the design pillars of the game set, I began to concept various minigames, boards, and items while the programming team went off and build the base boardgame system (moving spaces, currency, online functionality).
I knew that I wanted to make boards around Co-Operation and Reality's Edge, as we already had a ton of art assets that we could use for these maps and mechanics that could be translated into items and occurrences.
I started with the CoOperation themed board. I wanted to base the items on the game on the tools that were used by the player characters in the game which are:
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Pulse EMP - propel yourself and/or other players across the map
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T.R.A.M.P - Stun opponents who walk over it, ending their turn
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Power Glove - destroy fragile walls to reveal paths
Then I ideated on various occurrences. These would be triggered when a player lands on a corresponding space:
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Hippo - hippo will throw the player onto a path of their choice
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Scoundrel - Will open and close various doors around the level
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Robot - Chase any players away on their path
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Chair - will fling player across the map
I then went onto concept a map for Reality's Edge. This game was a bit trickier to concept for since it has less mechanically then CoOperation.
Ultimately, I decided upon the following items:
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Grapple
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Rune Rock
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Ancient Flute
Then I decided on the occurrences of the map:
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Reality Shift - Every 3 turns, the realities shift, revealing new paths and closing old ones
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Shift Shrine - The shift will occur prematurely
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Rat Band - Pay them to perform a serenade.
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Void - Swap all players randomly
I then began to concept a handful of minigames. These minigames would be split across 3 different categories:
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Free For All
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1V3
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2V2
The main thing I had to consider when concepting these minigames was that they didn't all have to be "fair". Party games thrive on a balance of skill based, luck based, and seemingly unfair minigames. This variety gives anyone who plays a fair shot of winning, no matter how experienced / inexperienced they are.
The lists shown are all of the minigames I came up with, split up by their category.
