This was my passion project from the summer of 2019 through spring of 2021. Available on the Tabletop Simulator Workshop in Steam. Inspired by the board game Risk, this game involves a similar troop acquisition and territory conquering core loop. The primary difference is that resolving battles is done by building armies in the digital game Totally Accurate Battle Simulator (TABS) instead of dice rolling. It was iterated and improved on over 50 times during 20 months of playtesting since the initial playable release.
TACOS I & II
The Board
This was a journey of analog level design and pushed my non-existent (at the time) art skills to the limit.
First, I analyzed the Risk board on a mechanical level by creating a node connection diagram. Then, I used a random map generator to get a rough idea of continent and country borders. From there, I combined the artistic style of Risk with the vibrant palette used in TABS and the aforementioned components to create the first board.
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From there, I made a node map in the rough shape of the fantasy map, following a similar structure to the Risk node map. Then I combined the artistic style of Risk with the vibrant palette used in TABS and the aforementioned components to create the first board.
After some testing, I made the first revision to the map, which was an improvement visually and mechanically. However, it quickly became apparent that the placement of countries was inherently flawed for proper player separation and I began a new node map with no visual reference to bind my decisions. During the iteration of the second map, I renamed the game from TABS Risk to TACOS. Visually, the final version of the TACOS map was highest quality during the whole project, but the gameplay was plagued with major issues.
Originally I had decided that the project was done at TACOS Map v3, but I didn't want to leave it in such a poor state after pouring in so much work. Throwing out my old ideas once again, I started designing the game again nearly from the ground up using all of the new game development knowledge I had acquired and arrived at the TACOS II prototype below, which focused on simplifying gameplay and shortening the playtime drastically.
That marks the end of the board journey for TACOS/TACOS II. Obviously this is only the highlights, there were many minor revisions between each version shown here. Working out the mechanical kinks and getting the visual style solidified taught me a ton along the way.
The Rules
For the sake of time, this is only the first rulebook, the final version for TACOS, and the final for WAIFUS.
Read the rulebooks if you wish, I'll break down the changes concisely here though.
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The first was focused on making the core game work and stuck closely to the base rules of Risk. The rule iterations through TACOS were focused on fixing major balance issues with the combat systems.
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For doing the battles in TABS, I had custom costs for each troop the game offered. TABS was being developed alongside my game so the amount of troops kept increasing all the way up to the current ~120. Those custom costs were constantly being tweaked and exploited during playtests.
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TACOS II marks a significant overhaul of the core systems in place, focusing on generating the board during play rather than have pre-made maps, and removes or modifies many of the playtime intensive features present in earlier versions (still early in playtesting).
Death Bloom
This was an in class studio project where I did the game design for the player controller and the mechanics of the last level
This was created for the SGDA Arcade Jam in the spring of '22. For this project I was the primary game designer and in charge of all the audio work, where I delved into the world of creating 8-bit sfx and music for the first time.
Revenge of the Roombas
In 'n Out Laws
This is a faction I created for the popular board game Root, can be found in the primary Root fan content community; still early in playtesting at the moment.
Literary Ladders
This was a rapid prototype I created in GameMaker for class