Robound: The Upgraded Masters Board Game Development

Koç University

Media and Visual Arts

Graduation Project

MAVA 446

Advisor Cagla Turgul

I’ve been playing board games since the university. It’s a creative world, where you can implement different strategies in each game. We were dreaming about designing our board game with my friends and I decided to make it real in my graduation project.

Before the Coronavirus, the project was to design the game, with the entire strategy and components. After the lockdowns, we couldn’t continue with my mathematician friend working on the game economy, so I completed the project with an overall launch strategy and advertising materials such as teasers, banners, and social media.

The game's name is generated from "rebound" which means bouncing back.

It addresses the result of The Engineer's plan, which is being killed by the robots while planning to turn them off. "The Upgraded Masters" gives clues about the game's theme and the character's abilities.

Robound: The Upgraded Masters is a cooperative board game that blends strategic gameplay with immersive storytelling. Developed as my MAVA graduation project at Koç University, this game challenges players to work together, using their wits and teamwork to overcome obstacles and achieve victory.

The game can be played by 3 to 5 players, it takes around 2 hours.

It’s a turn-based game without dice.

The players receive resources and coins on the specific points of map.

There are some closed map points in the beginning of game, one character can open them.

The ultimate goal is to kill The Engineer.

Every player chooses a character randomly and each character has a strategic superiority but the winning chance is not determined by their unique features.

The players move on the board and try to complete missions to gain new items.

The missions are completed in exchange with coins and resources, and the items help them to upgrade.

The trade is free during the game between the players who are at the same point on the map.

At the end, there is only one winner in the game but until that point the players need to collaborate and reach enough points to kill The Engineer.

"Ace" means one in Latin.

The player playing Ace starts the game first.

This player can open the closed points on the map, so helps other players reach new points and receive the resources from there.

"Dux" means leader in latin.

Dux can upgrade the speed, so moves faster on the map.

It means that, if one player spends 2 energy points to go to a point,

Dux spends only 1 energy point for the same distance.

The player having this character helps others to reach far resources.

"Italo" means powerful in Latin.

This player has unique communication skills, so the trade is possible on a larger scale.

Italo doesn’t need to be at the same point to make trade with other players, which helps others to make trade from a larger distance.

"Maxon" means greatest in Latin.

The intelligence can be upgraded.

It means that the player having Maxon can complete the missions with fewer resources than other players normally need.

Maxon's excess resources help other players complete their missions.

"Vali" means strong in Latin.

The upgradable skill is the strength.

This player can take more than one mission at the same time which helps the others trade their missions.

The main purchase point is the official website as seen in the beginning.

In addition to promote our board game in e-commerce and board gaming websites,

there is a detailed social media plan.

Before the launch the teasers will be published on our YouTube and Instagram accounts.

After the launch there will be a unique content strategy, aiming to provide help for board game design beginners.

Mentor Monday is the result of a huge gap in board game industry.

When we first started to design the game, there was no one we can contact with. So, I decided to provide support for the beginners who need a mentor to design their own board game.

It is a livestream series on YouTube hosted by our team members. Every team member will answer the questions in their field as a mentor for beginners designing board games.

Tips&Tricks Workshops serve to a similar objective, but with a different method. In these workshops, influencers of board game industry provide small tasks to the audience and help them to start designing a game with different components.

PS: Our board game partners have already played Robound, and they extremely liked it.

One last material for our social media strategy is an Instagram filter. Our game fans might be fans of one character, this filter creates a fun interaction between the game world and the real one.

The core of board games is gathering people physically, but we still want to provide our game digitally for big fans who cannot meet other players. We will launch Robound on Steam to reach a larger audience.

Launching on Steam will help us to track a very important data. As mentioned earlier, the characteristic superiorities don’t affect the chance of winning during the game.

We designed The Upgraded Masters in a unique but equally powerful, so the result depends on the players’ game strategy. Steam will help us to provide data about the game results. So our game design will be supported by the actual data of the players. We are sure that the numbers will be almost equal.

Big thanks to The Brain Team, especially to Tuan for his greatest motivation and effort into the project. Robound will be on the shelves one day, and played with everyone!