Formula is a card game that I developed for the final project of the course Game Design Concepts by Ian Schreiber. The course took place this summer (from June 29 – September 6, 2009) with one blog post every Monday and every Thursday with the entire course fitting into 10 weeks.

This experimental course was really interesting and instructive as well; it was very well organazied with plenty of suggestions for lectures and exciting tips on game design. It was really worth the time I spent on it.

Formula is a card game that puts the user in the wizard's dress. It took me three weeks from the start to the completion and it required me to go through all the knowledge we learnt during the course's classes. As a first step we had to provide a concept and discuss it on the course's forum. Once we were satisfied with it (or once the time ran over) we were asked to work out a quick prototype to play with. Iteration after iteration we went through solo testing, player testing and blind testing (I wasn't able to perform any design testing since unfortunately I don't know any designer).

When, after several iterations, the rules seemed to work well, I designed the cards' aspect (User Interface Design) and the game is now ready!
Cards are provided here in hi-resolution pdf files, ready for printing. The rules are written in the rule papyrus file, downloadable from the link below.

A low-resolution gallery of some of the cards below.