Peace By Piece

Hand Illustration | Woodwork | Photoshop | Illustrator

Peace by Piece is a board game I designed based off other games I like with a hidden antagonist like The Battlestar Galactica Board Game and The Resistance. It features a board, several kinds of cards, and wooden dice. It is a game where people play as guardians of the forest protecting a seal in a tree that keeps evil from entering this world. However, the forces of evil can be quite… tempting. Someone on the team has been turned against their friends and has broken the seal. The goal is to repair the seal with the resources the players roll for while trying to learn who it is that is secretly sabotaging them.

Logo

The logo for the board game plays with a vine/branch stylizing and with the similarity between “Peace” and “Piece.” I tried some things and came up with the logos above. The final version was formed into an ellipse shape that married itself to the seal, the key focal point of the game. It could also be put very nicely on the back of the cards and fill the vertical space.

Game Box

The game’s box plays with the theme of warring sides. You have the evil hands wriggling up from below and the benevolent vines reaching down from above fighting over the seal where the logo is placed. The box itself is printed on Glama Kraft paper which gives it a nice wooden aesthetic, and it feels nice too.

Game Board

My original idea for the board was just a tree. In this version, the tree itself was keeping the evil out through some means. The tree was destroyed, and the players had to regrow it. While I did like that idea, it was hard to keep an interesting silhouette on the board while also being able to flip the pieces to show who won a round. It also left people with not much to look at when the game started.

Ultimately, I changed to the final version to a tree I feel looks pretty magical already, a weeping willow. It took a few tries to get the leaves a good shape, but the result and the trunk turned out really well. I had the idea to have an ellipse shape in the middle to set the seal. It was an establishing scene for an arborous area while also having circles up top for my time limit mechanic to add pressure to the players.

The board itself is made from two layers of chipboard, and laser cut to fit. When the parts would be cut within the design, I attempted to hide it in the leaves.

Seal

The seal itself was a fun project. It is sort of a pizza ellipse. One side has the evil hands trying to claw its way out of the seal. The other side has some special vines resealing it. Who won a round determines which side gets flipped up. Ultimately the large top part would be the deciding win if nobody had a majority. So, the last piece needs to be so special. For the evil, crooked side, I have a crooked smile as if it’s laughing at its victory. Contrarily, the vines have a nice calming peace for the heroes’ win.

Resource Cards - General

My idea for the cards were to have an interesting circular shape to them. They would also have icons of the elements needed to regrow the tree. They were sun, water, and nature. The circular cards didn’t work out as they couldn’t be shuffled as well and one wouldn’t be able to tell which way was up very well. People would have been messing with them and trying to get them straight, leading to an unpleasant card holding experience. I came up with a tablet shape that shares notes with the seal. So, the logo fits perfectly. Also, it works about the same as a rectangular card while looking nicer. I hand cut over a hundred of these cards, and gave them one of eight woodgrain patterns to make them unique, but not unique enough to be able to read other players' hands.

Resource Cards - Sun

The sun was the first card. When I changed the shape and the tree, I realized that I wanted a plant to be the resource and not some icon. The sun became sunflowers, which as an easy enough leap. I came up with three patterns, and the result was one of my favorite cards.

Resource Cards - Nature

Next was nature. This change was a little harder. What is the plant of nature? Literally all of them. Moss seemed like a nice sort of everywhere plant, and it often is used as a layering element to show when nature has reclaimed something. It also coated the tablets very well and looked really nice.

Resource Cards - Water

Water was also an easy translation. It was pretty obvious that the lily pad was the one to change it to. It turns out they have these little lilies on the pads and that made a nice spot of color to break the blue and the green.

Resource Cards - Evil

Last was my evil card. Its intention was to deduct from the players’ efforts. It would be junk in one’s hand and be hard to get rid of unless they happened to be playing against everyone else. If so, they could just sneak that in to play in their favor, and against their rivals. Mushrooms seemed like the best choice here since they symbolize decay.

Demands and Dice

Of course, the cards would be tiny art pieces without any reason to play them. The demand cards would determine what was needed every round in order to win if. For this I made dice, and I mirrored the symbols on the dice so players knew when they rolled something they needed. The cards are also the same paper used for the seal to distinguish them from the resources.

Field Guide

The final cards are the hidden nature cards. These would be drawn at the start of every game to see who had been turned. These cards are round, but shuffling them is minimal, and they won’t be in the hand nor will people have more than one. The problems the resource cards would have had wont exist here. The colored text allows players to tell what they have from any angle.