Treasure Hunter

Process Document
Challenge
The challenge was to create a “race to the finish” game by either starting with the theme and building on
the mechanics or starting with the mechanics and building on the theme.
We chose to start with a theme and explore the possible mechanics that we could tie in based on that.

Theme
We decided to make the players race to collect the most treasure in a limited number of turns in the
game. Our theme drew influences from Indiana Jones and Tomb Raider and other treasure hunting and
archeological themes. We decided to have the game board be a maze in which the players would have to
battle monsters, collect artifacts and eventually escape within the specified number of turns.

Research
The game that we researched the most through the development of Treasure Hunter was Dungeons, the
Dungeons and Dragons board game by the Wizards of the Coast. We were inspired by their monster
fighting system of having different levels of monsters offering different rewards. The combat mechanics
and the weapon system are also related to the Dungeons and Dragons combat system of rolls + bonuses
having to be higher than a certain number.
Initial Ideas

Artifact Pieces

Encounter Spaces
Our first iteration of the game had the players running around the maze board collecting artifact pieces
(blue spaces) and facing encounters (red spaces) that would, in turn, reward them with more artifact
pieces.
Movement was governed by a die roll.
The brown spirals were teleporters that the player could use to reach opposite ends of the map.
The players could exit the maze (through the corner spaces) whenever they wanted but after a set
number of turns a “death zone” would expand outwards from the center, forcing the players to move
towards the extremities of the map and eventually exit the maze.
The encounters consisted of varying difficulties of monsters to battle and environmental hazards.

If a player landed on another player’s space, they would enter combat and would battle each other for
artifact pieces.
Player vs monster and player vs player combat was initially governed through a roll of three dice. The
winner was the player whose total of the rolls was higher than the monsters HP value or the other
player’s roll (in the case of pvp combat).
When a player faced an encounter or took an artifact piece, they would cover the square they were on
with a square piece of white paper to mark that space as empty.
The players could access an ‘item shop’ at any point during the game and spend some of their artifact
pieces to buy weapons that give them bonuses in combat.

Iterations
In our first playtest we understood that we needed a better system of keeping track of which spaces had
been used, so we decided to keep small tokens instead of having pieces of paper cover the board. Instead
of using an expanding death zone we switched to a limited number of turns in which the players had to
collect artifacts and exit the maze. Our monster encounters proved to be too easy so we rebalanced the
monster cards. We changed the maze slightly to allow for fair access to each of the exits on the board.
After some more playtesting the game felt too simple and not strategic enough, so we decided to
introduce a quest system for the players to follow. At the start of the game the players would draw a
quest card and would have to follow the instructions on the quest card. We switched the main currency
from artifact pieces to ‘treasure’ and we set a limit of 15 turns. We also fixed each player’s movement to
5 spaces per turn.
Each quest card contains 3 locations that the player can reach to gain additional treasure, these locations
are only valid for the person holding that particular quest card. In addition to the locations the quest card
also contains 2 quests which can be like “defeat 2 monsters”, “collect 2 blue artifacts”, “battle another
player twice”, etc. If the player is able to complete all the locations and the 2 quests, then they get a
reward for completing a quest card. If, however they fail to finish the quests on the quest card they get a
penalty equal to the reward value of the card.

The artifacts were also revamped to an artifact deck, with artifacts having different colours and rarities.
The players collect artifacts to complete quests and artifacts also count as some treasure themselves.
Instead of making the shop available to the players throughout the game we set four spaces on the board
which the players had to go to if they wanted to purchase a weapon.
Monster cards were also changed. We made 3 ‘levels’ of monsters available with varying HPs and the
players had to declare, before combat, which level of monster they wanted to battle. The higher the
monster’s level, the greater the reward if the players successfully defeated it. Also, we allowed players
the option of drawing cards from the artifact deck instead of getting treasure as a reward for defeating
the monster.
The board was also visually restyled.
Final Submission
Board:
Cards:

Playtests: