Thieves of Ashenvale Design Thoughts

Initially the only goal was to practice design and execution by making a digital boardgame in Unity. When I did research on boardgames, I was very quickly intrigued by the idea of hidden role games like Coup and Lords of Waterdeep, and wanted to put my own spin on it.

The gameplay concept is simply put asymmetrical teamwork and constant doubt who you can trust and how to use their own intrests against one another. This is framed in the narrative of trying to run a thieves guild, when you know that all of you will have their own best interests closest. Depending on the player count a number of different roles with different win conditions is present. I will spare you the longwinded rules explanation, you can find them here if you are interested.

In short though I am happy with the game. It is maybe a bit complicated, but the characters and roles are intriguing and varied, and the implementation has that certain charm that comes from physicality in digital spaces.

What I am particularly proud of was my ability to make the characters unique and interesting with just a single bit of text and a picture combined with an evocative mechanic.

What I learned during this project was how much of a driving force variety can be for me. Were I forced to work on all of the illustrations one after another, I think I would have burned out on it. As it was however, I was able to mix tasks depending on my mood. What was also noticeable however, was that the programming tasks did not have this risk of burnout for me, they were frustrating and tedious at times, sure, but ultimately the desire to make it work was stronger than all of that.