The small nature of the company allowed me to try my hand with many aspects of the development of a board game, from both the dev and the CEO perspective. During this time I have:
- Covered the production, economic, and design sides, from concept to release
- Interacted with artists, other devs, publishers, event organizers and more.
- Planned and carried out expositions on several expos and conventions such Lucca Comics & Games
- Kept my focus on the design side, sometimes from the basics, sometimes as game director, but always involved in the core of the game development.
Dwarfest
Info
Timeframe
9 months
Release
2014
Position
Game Director – Art Director
Team
1 Producer
1 Game/Art Director
3 Game Designers
1 Artist
1 Graphic Designer
Publisher
Il Barone Games
When we started collaborating with this excellent group of designers, they already had a prototype at advanced level. All this game needed was a good production, a clear art direction and a drinking optional mode. My responsabilities came accordingly:
- Art direction: fantasy dwarves already have a strong identity, so I just had to respect that. I aimed for a warm atmosphere for a game about pubs
- Drinking mode: I felt like the classic drinking mode had an issue: usually drinking is the penalty, but people actually play these games to drink. So I turned the drinking in a resource. Players can drink instead of pay gems to acquire stuff; convenient, but in a game that require basic math and a bit of coordination, being drunk could not be the best.
Hug Me
Info
Timeframe
9 months
Release
2012
Position
Game Designer – Producer
Team
3 Game Designers
1 Artist
Publisher
Il Barone Games
Party/Strategic…ish game about misunderstood friendly zombies, with 3 different playstiles from humans, to infecteds, to zombies, and relative win condiitions.
- Ever-changing experience: 80+ unique cards, with unique interactions. For this reason it required an enormous amount of testing, and still, after years, players discovered new interactions. For this same reason, it was broken as much as unpredictable, providing to me the invaluable lesson of “keep it simple or face the consequences”.
- Flexible experience: this was hard to achieve, but meant a huge success (and selling point) to me:
- No one is ever knocked out of the game, while keeping chances to win until the end.
- Players can enter or exit the game at any moment without significantly affect the experience for the other participants.
Ago
Info
Timeframe
Dec 2017 – June 2018
Position
Game Designer
Team
4 Game Designers
Strategic, asymmetrical, hunt-themed, 4vs1 pvp board game set in the Pleistocene.
Since this was an academical project, we decided get out of the comfort zone experimenting with the unusual and ambitious mechanics, and learn from whatever disaster might happen.
- Dices are both HP and actions. Losing the first has consequences for the action you can do. To avoid a too punitive loop, w added a counter-loop, always in line with the feral theme. Characters to death have a rush have few actions, but are more dangerous
- Each hunter and each beast is unique, with a personality matching its peculiar role in the hunt
- An optional communication system between humans. Players using them can only communicate strategies with gestures.