Our task was to create a board game as a school project. We wanted to create a board game that had both elements of cooperation and conflict.

In Let’s Split Up! the players are trapped in a haunted mansion. They have to venture through rooms and collect treasures in order to escape before they all go insane. Once a player’s sanity reaches zero, they become insane. The insane player’s new objective is to now make other players insane and make sure that nobody gets out.

The sane players need to find a total of three treasures to offer as tribute to the house in order to escape. The players can choose to combine their efforts and add their total tresures to get out at the same time, or steal from each other and fight to be the sole survivor.

Cooperation is completely optional. Events and cards in this game are designed in way that leads to conflict between players and makes it difficult to cooperate. Every player must weigh the risks in their decisions, as one selfish decision can be the spark that culminates in total chaos.

Events bring changes to the game state in different ways, while items can help you avoid losing sanity or weapons useable for combat.

It takes a fool to remain sane

While becoming insane can be seen as a loss for the player, it also presents them with a new objective and opportunity to win the game. This is a way to create more engagement from the players, as their motivations for whom to attack can be shaped by betrayals during their time as sane. The game narrative is shaped by player conflicts.

When playtesting the game we realized that it is stressful to constantly maintain your sanity, while being on the brink of insanity sets you in a vulnerable situation. While becoming insane is an undesireable outcome, the player becomes free of the weight of maintaining sanity.

From playtesting sessions we discovered that insanity brings more chaos to the playfield and revitalizes the player, motivating them to keep on playing.

Making board games are a different experience from video games. By being more analogue by design, it requires that the systems we develop are easy to follow and do not disrupt the flow of the game. Through continuous playtesting we carefully added and removed gameplay elements that led to a better flow. The games complexity did not come from advanced formulas within the system, but through social interaction and decision making. At first glance the game did not seem to be a lengthy game, but every turn sparked discussion and debate among players that took up a large part of the gameplay length. From my perspective I see this as a success. A board game is a game where social interaction is key. You discuss and laugh with the others sitting by you and suddenly a two hours have gone by.