game design
Junkyard, a Board Game
Winner of Best Prototype Award at Melbourne Design Week's Cybernetic Futures Showcase
Project overview
Project brief
This was a project for INFO20005 Game Design. The brief was to create a Euro-style game, playable in 40 minutes.
Junkyard is a thoughtful, strategic drafting game set in a bleak yet heartwarming post-human landscape. Players take on the role of lonely scavenger robots in a trash-covered landscape, picking through scrap piles to salvage gears. With these gears, players repair their fellow run-down robots, each bearing a unique personality and special abilities that shape gameplay.
At its core, Junkyard is about finding beauty in the overlooked and discarded, building community even in challenging conditions, and consuming mindfully.
The project was completed over two months, with two formal playtesting sessions and numerous informal testing sessions throughout.
First prototype
My initial idea going into this game was to create a heartwarming, aesthetically pleasing sci-fi game. I knew that I wanted to hand-illustrate it all. From our initial ideation, we drew on inspiration from properties like WALL-E and The Wild Robot, and other drafting games such as Azul and 7 Wonders.
We created a basic first prototype in Figma to use in playtesting as we fleshed out the mechanics of the game.
Playtesting sessions
We conducted two main playtesting sessions. The first was with a low fidelity prototype of the game, and was intended to test the premise and core mechanics of the game. In the second, we focused on testing the balance and pace of the game, and some new mechanics we had introduced. Below are the key issues we discovered and addressed as a result of these sessions.
Key changes
Balancing penalties
Players felt penalties were often too random and luck-based rather than resulting from their own decisions. This shifted their strategy to one of minimizing penalties rather than completing robots.
Our solution: We imposed a cap on the number of penalties a player can take in one turn, and added robots with special abilities that help players discard penalties.
Introducing intermediate rewards
Players noted that the middle of the game lacked a sense of progress, as all the rewards were long term. They didn't feel rewarded immediately for completing robots.
Our solution: We created robot special abilities which kick in once players finish fixing a robot, giving them a one-time benefit.
Adding robot drafting
We added a 3-card robot drafting mechanism after our first playtesting round, which followed naturally after we introduced the concept of robots' special abilities. This enabled players to develop longer-term strategies beyond the immediate goal of fixing the robots in front of them.
Testing with friends and family
After each formal playtesting session, we summarized key issues and insights that were revealed. We would then sit down and have another ideation session, brainstorming changes and additions to mechanics that could remove problematic or boring parts of the game, and enhance players' favorite aspects. We then divided and assigned these ideas to each person, and went off to test them out one-by-one in casual play with friends and family. Once we had observed these ideas in action, we came together and workshopped how to incorporate and combine them into the existing game. This divide-and-conquer approach allowed us to rapidly test many ideas.
Winner of Best Prototype Award at Melbourne Design Week's Cybernetic Futures Showcase
We were selected to present our work in the Melbourne Design Week Cybernetic Futures Showcase, where we had the chance to exhibit Junkyard to game aficionados, academics, and game publishers alike. At the exhibition, we received the award for Best Prototype from the judges.
The game was extremely well-received by audiences, with players praising it for having stunning and adorable visuals, and for creating lighthearted, family-style play.