Adventures in Game Design: The Secret of Manor Mysterium
I’m using my free time to explore some Coursera and EdX courses. I’m just auditing, so in some of the courses I can’t turn in the homework or get peer feedback, and for the Game Design course I’m taking that really bites! I’m enjoying the assignments and I want somebody to tell me how I’m doing! (Other than my spouse, Curtis, although he is very supportive and has lots of useful feedback)
This first assignment was to create a game that could be played by one player, with all instructions/needed materials (i.e. gameboard) fitting on one piece of paper. The only additional material could be two six-sided dice (which can be simulated using sites like rolladie.net).
Missing tabletop RPGs (SO MUCH), I immediately wanted to use some kind of statistic-driven mechanic, and since I’m currently reading the biography of Shirley Jackson, author of House on Haunted Hill, I went with a haunted house theme.
The player would take the role of a person exploring an abandoned mansion, searching for a hidden treasure. In each room, they would conduct a séance attempting to locate the treasure or get hints from the spirits dwelling in the house. The results would be represented by the dice rolls, with some negatively affecting the player’s level of Fear, similar to the Sanity mechanic in Betrayal at House on the Hill (if you haven’t played it, you should).
Once the treasure was located, the player would need to get back to the front door as quickly as possible, with each turn including an additional roll to potentially risk increasing their Fear. If the player makes it out before their Fear becomes too great, they win! Otherwise, they drop the treasure and flee in fear.
It was a lot of fun playtesting this with Curtis, and it was easily made into a two-player game, making it into a race to see who could get the treasure and escape first. We did end up using more pieces than just the dice- we’ve been using tiny Pokemon figures as potty training bribes for our son, so those became our game pieces, and we used washi tape rolls to track our Fear levels.
If you’re interested in trying this out yourself, download the one-pager version here and let me know how it goes!
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