Platformer is a micro-board game for up to 4 players. The goal is for each player to make it through a board or level within one minute. Because the board in play moves between all players, there is no inherent advantage in going first, and the game continues until all players have completed the final level. The game is for players 10 years of age and up due to small part choking hazards, and a full game is approximately 20 minutes per player. This game can be played by a single player as well.
This game has a few extra necessary components. The first is a 1 minute sand timer. A pencil or pen, a six sided die, and player tokens. The player tokens were 3d printed and have the design of the figure on the tutorial cards.
Movement is governed by dice rolls, while moving along a platform is a free action, jumps across or up require a successful dice roll. If the roll is unsuccessful, they will land where they rolled, even if that means starting the level over. The player has as many retries in 60 seconds as it takes to get through. A successful roll will allow the player to choose where they land within that space.
There are 10 different areas, each with a different mechanic except for the Fortress level which takes from most of the others. The grasslands have vines the player can swing from, the cave has spikes which mean restarting. The volcano level has lava which will make the player restart and lose their collected power ups. The haunted house level has one way blocks. The city has scaffolding the player can jump up through. The sky has clouds that can only be jumped on once. The desert has quicksand that the player can sink into or through, depending on their roll. The ice fields have ice blocks which, if you jump from them, you have no control over where you land. And finally the locks require a certain number rolled to open.
All of the levels were made using Aseprite and Pixel Studio (the pixel art app, not the defunct Google AI thing). The dot grid is very visable to allow players to see where they are rolling. The red orb is a point bonus, the green orb is a power up, and the blue and gold orbs are the starting point and goal respectively.
This is the sell sheet used to apply to present a prototype of the game at a local board game convention.
The idea for this game began when I found my old copy of How To Win At Super Mario Brothers, a supplement from Nintendo Power from 1987. I flipped through it and while there were some screenshots in the book, all of the level maps were hand-drawn. I then wondered if it would be possible to make a board game based around this. Slightly less than a month later, the idea spilled out into a messy sketch, and then a cleaned up digital drawing that used specific rolls to get anywhere that I had a couple of co-workers test out. I included a 3d printed character from Printables user Moose (found here: Cute Game Characters / Pieces by Moose | Download free STL model | Printables.com) and it worked! It was fun and frustrating! That's what I was going for. A bit more playtesting and I went with the dot grid system to make the movement more consistent.
While drawing the initial levels, it occurred to me that the drawings looked a lot like MIDI piano roll. So in order to create enough levels in a reasonable amount of time, I sat down at my keyboard and played piano for half an hour. I then designed and printed a frame I could use to mark spots that would make decent levels. I then translated those small markings into larger drawings with a bit more space and detail, and then used Aseprite's tilemap feature to paint the levels from there. I designed individual map tiles in Pixel Studio (once again, not the Google AI one) and put all of it together in Affinity. I then designed frames for the levels and a way to show the difficulty and the worth of the bonuses.
How To Win At Super Mario Brothers
Hand drawn maps in How To Win At Super Mario Bothers
A closeup of the piece next to a six sided die
A digitized level card with a 3d printed game piece
A hand drawn map without the number jumping system
Using the frame to design level layouts from a MIDI piano roll
Me holding up a contact sheet of test printed levels
Corner cutting each card
Current playable prototype
As of this writing, which will be updated as needed, Platformer is in a 0.5 Prototype stage, and ready for early feedback.