Elemenders is a two-player strategy board game with three types of elemental units: fire, water, and plant. No unit type has any advantage over another in direct combat, but each one has the ability to terraform the ground around it, producing positive effects for that unit type, and sometimes negative effects for others.
The game is played on a 10 by 11 grid, with each player starting with an equal number of units on either side. Units move across the grid in a manner similar to chess; units are typically allowed to move two spaces forward, back, or to either side.
Each player starts with two of each elemental unit, and can place them on any available tile on their side of the board. Later as the game progresses, players are able to spawn additional units of whatever element they’d like.
Overview
Elemenders
Game Genre: Strategy
Development Span: Four months
Personal Role: Developer (Solo)
Platform: PC/Physical
Rather than have a unit move or attack, a player can instead choose to have a unit terraform the terrain around it. Terraforming converts ground tiles into elemental tiles (lava, river, or forest), which can only be changed again by being overwritten by another element. There is no differentiation between terrain spawned by player 1 or 2, as elemental tiles affect both player’s units equally regardless of who placed them there. This means players must plan ahead and consider how certain terrain might help or hinder their own units.
Units and Terraforming
Fire Units
Fire units are the most offensive unit type. They can traverse two tiles per turn and can terraform lava.
Lava is a volatile, damaging terrain. When created, it covers five tiles around the unit in a cross pattern. Lava damages units for one point of damage if they end their turn on top of it. All fire units are immune to this damage.
Lava tiles overwrite forest tiles, and are overwritten by river tiles.
Water Units
Water units specialize in mobility. They can normally move two tiles per turn and can terraform rivers.
A river is a type of terrain that allows for rapid travel across the game board. When created, it covers five tiles in a line in front and behind the unit. When terraforming a river, the player can decide whether to create it going vertically or horizontally. A river damages fire units for one point of damage if they end their turn on top of it. Most importantly, rivers allow water units to instantly travel all the way along a lane of connected river tiles.
River tiles overwrite lava tiles, and are overwritten by forest tiles.
Plant units have the highest defensive capabilities of any unit. They normally can move only one tile per turn and can terraform forest terrain.
Forest is a necessary sanctuary for plant units. When created, it covers five tiles around the unit in a cross pattern. A plant unit is able to move two tiles per turn, so long as both of those moves are on forest tiles. Additionally, when a plant unit ends its turn on a forest tile, it is healed back to full health. Forests have no detrimental or beneficial effects on other units.
Forest tiles overwrite water tiles, and are overwritten by lava tiles.
Plant Units
Elemenders began as an experiment to develop a game system that gives players the ability to not only move their units around, but to shape even the terrain in order to change the flow of the game to their favor. This kind of terrain shifting ability is something I have never seen in a versus game, and I wanted to create a board game that would allow for this experience.
Development
The physical prototype of the game used Risk pieces and a transparent plastic sheet over a grid, allowing terrain to be drawn with dry-erase marker.
The game went through many iterations in a short period of time. Initially, I had it set up so that players would have to sacrifice a unit in order to use that unit’s terraforming ability. I intended for this to be a system that required players to be very selective and strategic with their terraforming choices, but it very quickly became clear that this setup was inherently flawed. Sacrificing several units of the same element to create lots of that terrain type would leave that player with few units that could actually take advantage of that terrain. I concepted many other versions of the game in order to fix this issue, such as making units sacrifice themselves to create terrain that benefits a different element in order to make the cost of sacrifice remain beneficial. Eventually I implemented the simple solution of making units not be able to move or attack on the same turn as terraforming. This way, the player would still have to “sacrifice” the unit’s turn in order to create the terrain, without being left crippled afterwards because of a lack of units.
Once I had a design that was logistically sound, I then immediately brought the game to QA testing. This testing proved to be very helpful, as there were plenty of small rules and regulations that I hadn't considered that had to be addressed in the ruleset.
Overall, response to Elemenders has been very positive. Players have found the game to be fun and engaging, and have expressed interest in playing more. I’ve seen strategies employed that I expected, as well as interesting ones that I didn’t anticipate, and it has been very rewarding to see the many ways that players have utilized the mechanics, and the direction in which the game has evolved.
