Silverscreen Studios

I created a game about making movies as my first solo board game project. In the game, you match actors and directors to the right scripts. Since the audience’s preferences are constantly evolving, you must develop films that cater to their current tastes. You’re calling the shots to steer your studio toward success in Silverscreen Studios.

Genre
Economic Board Game

Demo
Tabletop Simulator

Workload
6 weeks / 2-3 hours a week

Personal Project
Nick Asmussen LLC

Year
2021

Team Size
1

My Roles

Lead Designer

Creator
Technical writer
Lead playtester
Art Director

Systems Designer

Cost-Benefit Analysis
Probability Analysis
Data Driven Iterative Mechanics

Contributions

As the game’s creator and sole designer, I developed the entire game from start to finish. From my mistakes in previous board game projects, I learned that I needed to start small and test often. These two simple rules made this game a success.

For this project, I leveraged my knowledge of board game rulebooks and my writing skills as a technical writer. One of my goals when writing this rulebook was to keep the text as minimalist as possible while still providing the reader with a complete understanding of the game.

As the systems designer for this project, in addition to designing all the game's core rules, I needed to know the range and probability of all possible star scores when players complete their films in the game. This was crucial to understand how many victory points to award to different tiers of scores. To understand this, I created an algorithm in Google Sheets that accounted for every possibility. It outputs scores for optimal and suboptimal play and the randomness of the dice rolls.

Process

Iterative Mechanic Development

One of my goals when designing Silverscreen Studios was to present the player with compelling choices every turn.
Conducting over a dozen playtests was the key to discovering secondary mechanics to support my core mechanics.

The Agency Action list dramatically improved the game flow by providing the player with more options.

Agency Actions
- Any time a playtester would get stuck without an interesting choice, I noted it.
- Agency actions are extra moves a player can make if they want to pay or do not like their current options.

Monte Carlo in Spreadsheets

I created a Monte Carlo simulation that combined different dice mechanics to simulate thousands of possible outcomes for optimal and suboptimal play.

This process generated the range and probability of possible star scores.
It also provided data that helped determine the dice mechanics I would implement.

The probability of possible star scores establishes the victory points tiers for a film’s star score.

Randomness

Card selection and dice drafting are low-risk randomness.

Both are offered as choices for the player.

Should I add more high-risk randomness?

Yes, in playtests, players enjoyed rolling dice to increase the star score for their films.

Playtesting

Paper prototype with index cards, dice, and simple components.
Playtesters with different experience levels with board games.
Observation-based notes with solution-based annotations.

Future Mechanics

Expansions for Silverscreen Studio are still being developed.
Expansion plans:

Crew cards: single-use boosts to film production.
Studio cards: permanent upgrades to your studio.
Push your luck performances: adds even greater stakes to rolling performance dice.

Dice Drafting Pool

Dice drafting is a core mechanic that starts the core game loop. Each symbol represents a script of a different genre. Selecting one earns you a script token of that genre and removes the die from the pool. Later, you match this script with actors and directors to produce a film.
Blue Player Turn

The blue player has two films in production. You can tell based on the color of the script tokens: blue for drama and black for horror. This is wise because they’ll score extra points for matching goal cards.
Bonus Dice

Bonus dice add to a film’s star score when it’s finished. You roll them if the director and actor(s) have a genre specialty that matches the film’s script. This is an extra reward for assigning the right people to the right project. If you roll well, you may even win a Film Award.
Red Player Turn

The Red Player is producing a romance and sci-fi film. You can tell by the color of the script token on the rows of cards above the score counters. This is a wise move since they will score victory points for completing their Goal cards in the bottom right.
Playing the Game

Silverscreen Studios is played over several rounds. In a round, players take turns performing one action until all players pass. After four rounds, the game advances one in-game year. Players earn points for their highest scoring film that year. They can also score victory points for completing films that match their goal cards. The player that earns the most victory points after five years (twenty rounds) wins the game.