Pareidolia

2022

Summary

Pareidolia is a 5-player board game where one of the players takes the role of an evil mannequin aiming to convert all humans into a mannequin army, while the others play as a group of friends trapped overnight in a shopping center, struggling to survive until dawn.

Type: Board game
Role: Game Designer
Team: Santiago Contreras (Design & Art)
Dominga Parraguez (Design & Art)

My Contribution

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Prototype testing
Prototype testing

Game and Narrative Designer

  • Researched the chilean legend El Caleuche and analyzed it, adapting its narrative into the main mechanics and feel of the game.
  • Designed an innovative game mechanic where the mannequins move under the cards while the other players don't look, and some players change teams mid-game when possesed by the villains.
  • Made a prototype for the game using a standard deck of cards and pieces from other board games.
  • Organized several playtesting sessions and iterated the prototype based on the result of the tests.
  • Created the narrative theme and adapted the game elements to fit it.

Rulebook Creator

  • Designed, edited and printed a 12-page rulebook for the game using Adobe InDesign.
Rulebook (digital view)
Rulebook

Postmortem

What went well

  • Our game started very simple and we tweaked mechanics one by one during the playtests, which helped a lot to notice how balance worked in our game and how to make it better.
  • We successfully captured the essence and emotions evoked by the legend. The mechanics we designed triggered dynamics that mirrored those same sensations for the players.
  • The players enjoyed our game!

What went wrong

  • The randomness of rolling the dice for player movement was disliked by some players. We should've studied more the player archetypes we were aiming to entertain and tested alternatives that featured more agency.
  • Because of the close deadline, we decided to keep the playtests to five players, but that made the end result too strict, so we should've tested the game with less players as well.
  • We should've printed a physical prototype of the game elements before printing them officially, since they didn't come out as we anticipated.

What I learned

  • Iteration and prototyping is the most important part of game design, and the longest. It's crucial to test every change in the game mechanics, and pull the strings carefully so the results are clear. This stage not only shows if your game works and is entertaining, but also helps to understand your players.
  • Narrative excels when it helps to understand game mechanics faster, by immersing the players in the game's world and giving consistency.

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