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Knights of the Cupboard

A 1v1 card game, available now!
Buy the game
Watch a design retrospective

About

  • Role: Game Designer and Project Lead
  • Team Size: 1 artist, 1 designer
  • Development Time: 9 months
  • Platform: Physical
The holy grail
Knights of the Cupboard

Knights of the Cupboard is a 1v1 card game, designed to be accessible to players of a wide variety of skill levels. I brainstormed, prototyped, playtested and refined the game throughout its development, cumulating in its release on the game crafters' storefront.

Game Designer

As the designer for KotC, I was responsible for creating all of the content of KotC: the rules, card effects, card layouts, box design, store pages, and text written on each card. I also guided the artist's efforts to ensure the game maintained a visual theme consistant with both itself and the lighthearted gameplay.

Project Lead

As the project lead, I researched several potential manufacturers and distributers for KotC. I also created all of the marketing material including social media posts, the digital storefront, and KotC's entry on BoardGameGeek, the most popular board game wiki currently available.

Knights of the Cupboard Promo Image

Retrospective

What Went Well

  • Difficulty: KotC hit the desired difficulty level, as players of a wide variety of skill levels were able to figure out the rules and enjoy the game.
  • Manufacturing: Each copy of KotC needs only 2 sheets of standard card stock and 1 cardboard box to create, helping keep manufacturing costs down and the final price accessible.
  • Teamwork: I was able to communicate my vision for the game very well with the artist, who was able to produce visual assets that accompanied the themes of the game well.

What Went Wrong

  • Playtesting: A greater number of playtesting sessions should have been conducted to further inform refinement of the contents of the deck.
  • Project Duration: The project took much longer than anticipated, due to COVID creating difficulties scheduling safe playtesting sessions, and a delay in bringing the artist on board.
  • Infinite Loops: There is an admittedly unlikely possibility for an infinite loop to occur during gameplay which slipped through playtesting and card analysis.

What to Improve

  • Playtesting: Spending time finding opportunities to get prototypes in front of more people can be very helpful for gathering large amounts of feedback in a more condensed time period.
  • Project Duration: Setting clear timeline goals for myself and working to adhere to them to the best of my ability would help mitigate timelines stretching to the extent this one did.
  • Infinite Loops: Playtesting more will help identify these outliers, though also taking the time to check extreme cases will help identify unwanted and/or dangerous gameplay situations.
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