Flex your adventure muscle whenever the call of the wild strikes! Traverse enchanting terrain as you visit all of the exhilarating features on Alpha Mountain. Make sure you’ve got the right tools for the journey as you encounter bears, slippery glaciers and fabled witches along the way. Glory goes to the first person to kick back at base camp! Stage one of my game design process is here, and if you read on, you might just find yourself donning your hiking boots and venturing around the table top game of Alpha Mountain. Let’s take this hike together, one step at a time. Making games feels complicated AF. Deciding on which component to work on first, either story building or mechanics, has helped me to focus on the foreground rather than the distant peak. This subject of game design has me feeling similarly as out of depth as I did in my physics elective, that I thought would be wonderful tour of the universe; I’m probably writing this blog more for own comprehension than anything else. When I don’t understand something, I use reading as a navigation tool. Matt Forbeck (pg.20), suggests that….
‘A game without mechanics isn’t a game. It’s a story. Or possibly a thought experiment.’
‘A game without a metaphor isn’t a game. It’s a math problem. Maybe a puzzle. Or a toy.’
‘Even the most abstract games wear at least a veneer of metaphor. That gives the players a way to wrap our minds around the various mechanics and give them meaning.’
My creation feels a little like a puzzle like at the moment, but that breakdown gives me a bit of a map. Which is all part of the hike yeah, getting the right gear? Finding the best route? Laughing in horror when you trip over a rock and spill your last bag of noodles, 3000m up a peak. If you’re sick of my mountaineering metaphors, then don’t even open the dossier. It’s an avalanche.
Alpha Mountain is situated in the mass market slash Euro game genre’s as it is aimed at all ages and doesn’t require much cognitive lifting. To be found in department stores for a good price, this game level is as easy as pulling up to a lookout in your car. Learn it, love it, take it on your next hike! Expansion packs could include other renowned hikes such as the Overland in Tasmania, with a range of collectable player figurines. With a theme of outdoor adventure and a toe in the fantasy genre; map building is created with terrain/ experience cards and the use of asset cards depicting binoculars, rope and the like reinforce the hiking motif. This game is based on its name sake, a real summit in the Tantalus mountain range in British Columbia. She’s got it all, forests, glaciers and wildlife encounters that can be explored and conquered with drafted resources such a canoe or a precious flask of whisky. I chose this setting not only because it pays homage to a glorious playground that I’ve spent much time in but also because I’m throwing in a little Slavic Folklore.
Let’s take a peak at mechanics. Comprising of two decks of cards and a player token (can be substituted for anything e.g a piece of trail mix), this game will be minimal in components, yet maximal in visual vibrancy. It is difficult to determine exactly when an experience starts or ends…the experience of play commences well before the first player takes a turn, and even before the pieces are removed from the box (pg. 3961). At its core, Alpha Mountain is an abstracted simulation of the experience of hiking and exploring an outdoor trail. The key mechanical abstractions include:
Map Building
- Instead of physically traversing a real trail, players construct the path card-by-card from their hand
- The randomized terrain deck represents the unknown lay of the land awaiting discovery
Asset Management
- Rather than carrying actual camping gear, players have a hand of asset cards representing different equipment
- Discarding these assets allows players to overcome obstacles and unlock new terrain types
Player Positioning
- Maneuvering player pieces along the emerging trail simulates the movement and positioning required on a real hike
- Having the right piece positioning is required to play the final camp card
The core gameplay loop mechanically abstracts the cycle of:
- Planning each stage of the route based on the visible terrain
- Ensuring you have the right gear/assets to handle that terrain
- Advancing along the trail, watching your footing on each new terrain type
- Making strategic moves to make it to camp first
The game crafts its own self-prescribed ontological realm focused on trail exploration and outdoor adventures. While inspired by the real world, it establishes an inward-facing domain where its rules, systems, and game logics hold alethic primacy. Truth claims of possible/impossible are evaluated solely against adherence to the game’s internal frameworks, rather than measurement against an external reality. The axiomatic rulesets govern the possibility space, determining valid moves, legal positioning, and win conditions within this enclosed ontology. While thematically drawing from outdoor motifs, Alpha Mountain ascribes alethic value to conforming to its self-defined reasoning and constructs as the ultimate arbiter of truth.
Initial feedback has been positive and I have identified that the latter part of the second act needs work. Watch this space whilst I work on the crux of the hike!
Forbeck, M 2011. Metaphor vs. Mechanic: Don’t Fight the Fusion. The Kobold Guide to Board Game Design (edited by Mike Selinker). Open Design LLC Kirkland, WA.
Rogerson, M.J et.al. “I love all the bits.” The Materiality of boardgames, 2016. Microsoft research centre for social NUI, Melbourne Australia.
Crediting Claude.AI for collaboration on the latter half of this email. My partner is moving to Tasmania to build our house and my brain is cooked.
Jane BAMBI Drew 
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