OUTBREAK
STUDENT PROJECT, 2018
It’s 1854, and cholera is spreading rapidly through London.You have been tasked by the Committee of Scientific Inquiries, the head of the Board of Health, to find the cause of the outbreak. Get onto the scene while the disease is rampant and find the clues you need to stop the epidemic! The player who is closest to finding the truth during each infection period will go down in history as a hero of modern medicine.
We were challenged to create a reskin and add additional cards and mechanics to the party game, Love Letter. All of the cards were fully researched and illustrated, based on information found primarily from The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic - and How it Changed Science, Cities and the Modern World by Steven Johnson.
PROCESS
The process for this project involved a lot of playing around, literally. A group of us spent hours playing the original game to learn the strategy and mechanics involved, and then even more time play testing our new versions of it. Brainstorming themes involved finding complex systems with 8 or more parts that could be used in a similar relationship to the original game’s theme. To create new mechanics for the game, we had to understand what the original mechanics were and how we could insert another without disrupting game play. Once new mechanics were tested, cards were renamed, and lore was established, designing and illustrating the game could finally begin.