The Great Fuel Shortage of 21
Role in the Project
Game Designer (Solo Project)
High Concept
A competitive board game that pits players against each other as fuel hauler companies during a time of supply shortage. Use the cards to gain an advantage, make deals or even disrupt other players.
Development Overview
This board game was created during an ideation sprint over a period of a week. In the beginning, I set out to create a paper prototype of the game and to test it online with my friends using a webcam to show the board, however, I found that I could quickly create a prototype and upload it onto the game Tabletop Simulator. This meant I could duplicate pieces and cards easily to work out how much I would need and meant it was easier to test if the testers also had the game.
Development for Tabletop Simulator
The modding tools for this game allowed me to create all aspects of the board game prototype and upload them online for testers to download and play.
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Example of 3D models I imported into the game
Example of the Deck builder software that is used with the game.
Firstly, I could create 3D models for the game pieces and 2D images for the game board and cards. Once I had the game pieces imported into the game I could easily duplicate them to suit the amount I require for the game. The card manager allowed me to manage the card decks and how many copies I had of a certain card.
Play Testing
Once I had the initial prototype set out I began testing with my playtesters. We would play
through the game while I took notes depending on what I saw happening. For example, I
wanted to have a chaotic player vs player experience so I took notes when I saw cards that
encouraged this or when I felt something wasn’t doing enough.
Once I had done my first playtesting session I went about iterating on the design to improve the game. One of the things I ended up changing was a card that would give a player resources to include the options of which other player benefits from this card as well (but only gaining half as much), and a card that’ll affect more than one person negatively in a similar way.
Design Overview
I wanted to create a competitive chaotic experience for
players. Basing the game on a fuel supply issue the UK
was facing at the time (and looking back from the end
of 2022, what a simpler time that was) I now had a
setting for my board game.
Each player would compete with rival haulier companies
trying to exploit the situation. I have also included ways
that the players can cooperate with each other or disrupt
someone else’s operations.
The game is split into 6 main phases per turn.
The first two phases are the supply and demand phases. The supply phase shows how many truck pieces each player has at the start of the turn. This is fairly random but it can range from somewhere between 3-6. I chose to have this random so that some players would have more than others to encourage players to turn on each other. Then the demand phase will come up. At the beginning of the game, each player will get the main contract card, which shows what region they need to supply to get a points bonus. Players can also try to compete in each other’s regions to gain more points. So during the demand phase, the players draw cards that’ll show how many demand tokens will be placed in each region. Showing how many resources each player needs to allocate.
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Example of an Overtime card (left) and Action card (right)
The Next two Phases are the Government and Action Phases. These phases are the times when players can gain bonuses or have their efforts hindered. During the Government phase, a card will be drawn from a deck and applied to all players, some will be helpful while some may make a player’s situation worse. During the Action phase is where players can make better their situation or make someone else’s worse. Using the hand of action cards that they draw at the start of the game and the phase. I chose to have this phase after all the others as it would give players time to see who would have the most resource and who would need some more. This way it encourages players to use action cards that will hinder other players or strike deals to benefit both sides. The players will only get one chance per turn at this as they can only play one card a turn. This means players will have to choose carefully.
The last two phases are the Fulfillment and scoring phases. The Fulfillment phase will have each player, one by one place their lorry pieces in regions and take a demand in that region. This way players can see each other's plans unfold and change their plans if needed. I also added overtime cards after some play-testing sessions when I found some players had nothing to do during this phase. They are additional action cards that are played when a player cannot place a lorry piece for the first time. These overtime cards are similarly designed to the action cards, each will either help just the player using them or the whole group or if they are unlucky they’ll do nothing at all.
When everyone has run out of lorry pieces the fulfilment phase ends and the scoring phase begins. Simply the players will add up the demand tokens and add that to their score, they can also add scores from any contract cards (an extra point per lorry token). If a player has the most lorries tokens in that region it counts as them fulfilling the demand and they can draw an additional contract card (drawing three from the deck and choosing one). I included this as later into the game players will begin to have overlapping contracts, meaning they will be competing for those regions and this would encourage them to sabotage the other's game.
The game will end once someone has reached 80 points or the players have completed 8 turns. The addition of a progress tracker around the outside of the board will keep players informed on who is leading and who is behind as this could influence their decisions when making deals with other players or whom to use the punishing action cards on.