Bone Couture

Project Type:

Boardgame

Date:

2024

Bone Couture is a project born out of frustration and a desire for something new. As an academic exercise it was given to us first year game design students as our first major group project, with only a theme as our main instruction, it being "curses".

We went through many possibilities and even prototypes when coming up with a game idea -both WW2 as well as the yakuzas and yokais where topics we considered at some point- so that should tell you how indecisive we were. It got to a point, significantly into the project timeline, when, after many divisive comments from our advisors, we realized we just were not having fun with our game anymore. We were just pushing ourselves to make something that our teachers would find 'good' and that met certain expectations we had set for ourselves, that in the end simply didn't match how we felt about what we were making. So we took a risk and did a complete reset of the project, deciding to go for an ambitious physics-based idea (an idea that we had been jokingly mentionning but had been too scared to truly go for). In the end, the game isn't perfect, but it's a game we are all proud of and had a lot of fun working on.

My role during this project was to clarify the rules of our game design, and work with my team to balance the differend elements of our game. In Bone Couture, the goal is to flick your 'spirit' pawn to collect 'bone pieces' and have the most points (and therefore the best skeleton) by the end of the game. Each of these 'bone pieces' have a specific name, rank, point value, and effect. Common cards award less points but have no effect, whereas Uncommon, Rare, and Legendary cards have progressively higher and more powerful/intense effects (for example increasing collection range or letting you split your skeleton in two). There are also a few "curse cards" which only give a single point and have an effect that affect how a player plays, and thus their ability to collect more 'bone pieces' (for example, see the card on the left which reads: "Baby Bone - You now have to play using only your pinky finger"). I worked quite a bit on rephrasing these effects and making sure they were balanced overall to offer a fair gameplay experience. I also worked on writing the lore for Bone Couture: the players are spirits who have been invited by the lord of the underworld to the fanciest party ever, and must make themselves the best skeleton ever to look their best for the event. It's a simple introduction to set players into the game world, and reflects effectively how gameplay actions would be reflected into this universe. During our game presentations to professionals in the boardgame industry, I was the one to open the sessions with a little roleplay of this narration, which was appreciated by multiple professionals.