Duellum

description

Duellum is a symmetrical board game which has similarities to chess. In Duellum two players have 4 units each to their disposal. Each unit has their own way of moving across the board, whether it be flying over corpses and debris or swimming through water.

Each unit also has their own damage and defense stats that can be changed by drawing chance cards. These chance cards also add a new dimension to the game, because you can combine them to create a chain reaction of outcomes. An example could be freezing your opponent's units so you can stab them in the back, or placing boulders in front of them so you can't be reached.

Whenever a unit dies, it falls in the direction it has been hit from, blocking the path. This makes it so the playing field gets smaller the more units die. The direction the unit gets attacked from also decides how much damage the unit takes (backstabbing is 3 damage, from the side 2, so on).

Duellum has a physical board, cards and units, and is fully playable.

process

This project was a huge challenge! At first I came up with a directional damage system: Backstabbing gave you 3 damage points, side 2, and front just 1. I kept on testing it and refining it with several friends and family and found out ways to build on this concept.

The most rewarding aspect was when people would cuss each other out while playing: They would draw several cards and maniacally laugh at their opponent as their units got taken down one by one.

To this day I still tweak and iterate on the previous versions. The board game version is a lot to manage however, so I plan on making a digital version for mobile and tablets.