We are currently in a golden age when it comes to board games. With the advent of crowd funding tools like Kickstarter and Indiegogo, more game developers are able to bring their creations to a broader audience, targeted at the people who love table top games as much as they do. Board games and board gaming are projected to continue to grow and a diverse range of games will only help to build more interest in this space.

This project has been a labor of love for a long time. For over seven years now I have had some version of this game swimming in my mind. The initial concept was to have players take on roles of adverse factions of crews, planning and pulling off heists located in random sections of the city map. Recently, I used an online course by Ben Panter to refine my working concept.

During this step I made my first swerve. Rather than design a static board I realized that I could give my game more replay value by narrowing the scope from a static city board to a single building made up of modular room tiles that are placed with a mix of randomness and strategy during setup.

With initial testing I found a number of issues that either made the game either too easy or not fun or challenging to play.

Once I began testing with more players new issues began to materialize.

• The original prototype gave each player a hand of 10 action cards and special rules made it too confusing regarding when players were allowed to return played cards to their hands.
• The first concept I had for the game included aspects of magic, which upon reflection and testing made the theming of the game feel forced and incoherent. Moving forward I removed this magical aspect and the resulting game felt more polished.
• The first prototype I constructed gave 10 action cards to each player. The rules about playing these cards and if and when players were able to return them to their hands were overly confusing. In future versions of the game I ended up reducing the number of action cards each player received to five, but I made the cards asymmetrical by constructing six different roles players could play as, each with action cards unique to thier role.
• I initially designed my game to be set up as one long building, but when laid out I realized that this would make my game hard to set up for players playing on smaller gaming surfaces. The solution for this was to break up the building into two floors connected by a set of stairs or an elevator.

My first experience with putting my game in front of people who had never seen it was an eye opening experience. It was clear from the start of the session that I had some issues with how information had been laid out and how easy it was to find specific details when players had questions about the game and its rules.

The biggest hurdle by far was coming up with a coherent and concise way of writing the rules for setup and game play, and required me to step outside of my comfort zone. However, this process was vital in order to progress and be able to conduct blind play-testing for my game.

Around this step I was beginning to lose steam, suffering from creative block and not knowing how to progress. In order to break this mindset I tackled a quick start guide, which was just a different way of thinking about the same problem.

I next took what I had learned from my testing to determine an art style and layout for the icons on each room tile. I underwent many rounds for number of doors for each room as well as special rooms. Action Cards underwent numerous changes to make sure each role was fun to play and as effective as the other roles.

• Many rules needed to be rewritten/reworded to make them clearer for new players.
• Setup and Phase 1: the Floor Plan were the most easily understood and followed sections of the rules, with players getting confused after these sections.
• Room tiles with particular security features were difficult to read, primarily due to the level of fidelity of the prototype.

This project has been a lot of fun, though grueling at times, especially as I was juggling many other responsibilities. I would like to continue working on this project because there are still a few problems with the game play and it doesn't feel like a finished product yet.

There are still some balancing issues with some of the Action Cards across the different crew roles. Additionally, there is often a tipping point during play where the game stabilizes and it becomes  apparent that the players are going to win, which then eliminates the challenge of the game.

All in all this project has taught me a lot about making my own schedule and sticking with it, writing clear instructions, and testing products with users. I hope to one day be able to publish my game and see it in the wild at local game stores.