I’ve always loved playing board games, but recently, they have started to garner more and more of my attention. My wife might even tell you that it’s becoming a problem (and she’s right - we are running out of space to store the collection). Working as a video game designer for last nine years has taught me a lot, and video games continue to be a huge passion of mine. But, I’m excited to see how much, or how well, my learnings from video game design actually translate to board game design. So what is this game?
Food on Paper (working title) is card drafting/engine building game in which players collect ingredients from the shared market in order to complete recipes. Completed recipes will earn coins that can be used to purchase kitchen upgrades. As players complete recipes and upgrade their kitchens they will be competing to complete “star” objectives. The first player to build a 5 star restaurant will be the winner!
This game borrows from other established games with well known mechanics and I’ve tried to keep it relatively simple. My goal is to finish this game, and as it is my first board game design, I think keeping the scope and complexity reigned in a bit will work to my advantage. I do have some ideas for a few mechanics that could be layered in (like a food fight!) if it feels lacking. But, I’m going to start simple, and build from there.
I’ll give a quick breakdown of each of the systems I have in place thus far, and a preview of what the components are looking like!
NOTE: I’ve designed all of these cards using AI art. This is meant to be temporary and will be replaced at a later time.
The Market
On a player’s turn, one of the actions they can take is to “go to market”. When a player does this, they will choose 2 ingredients from the market. These can be drawn from the five faceup market cards, or drawn blind from the top of the market deck. There is a “wild” ingredient (I’m calling all spice) that players are only allowed to draw one if drawn from the faceup market.
Recipes
After amassing some ingredients, players will be able to use those ingredients to complete recipes! A completed recipe will payout a certain amount of coins. The more ingredients used to complete a recipe, the greater the payout. Ingredients are dispersed equally (well, very nearly) across all recipes - so any one ingredient shouldn’t be more valuable than the next - all spice excluded.
Kitchen Upgrades
Players will be able to use the coins they’ve collected to purchase upgrades for their kitchen. These upgrades will allow players to draft more cards from the market, make more money for completed recipes, allow for substitutions in recipes, or more!
Star Objectives
Players will have a shared pool of objectives. If at any time during a player’s turn, they’ve satisfied an objective, they will place one of their 5 stars on the objective. The first player to place all of their stars will be declared the winner!
