Game Designer / Artist

Overview

Lucky Dragon is an award-winning board game concept that a team of designers and I created from scratch for a college course. We built the game first using only paper and pens, before making a digital mockup, then finally transforming our creation into a physical board game. It was inspired by games like Mafia, One Night Ultimate Werewolf, and Secret Hitler.

What’s it about?

You are an employee at Lucky Dragon, 4th best C-rated restaurant in a twenty mile radius. Unfortunately, due to budget cuts, they’re going to fire three of the four employees by the end of the month. The work environment at Lucky Dragon is… toxic, to put it lightly. Work ethic and good manners won’t get you far here. The goal of Lucky Dragon is to lie, cheat, steal, and sabotage your way to the top of the restaurant’s employee food chain in order to keep your job. All the while being discreet enough to not alert the manager or draw attention from other players. The game is 2-4 players and can be beaten in under 20 minutes. It’s designed to be a highly re-playable, fast paced experience where much of the fun is drawn from the social aspects of lying to your friends and being an all around mischievous bastard.

My Role

I helped with the early phases of game design and ideation, but transitioned my focus to art and narrative aspects later down the line. We always knew we wanted the game to be set at a restaurant, but it was my job to come up with the “mythos” of Lucky Dragon. This included writing card descriptions, rule sheets, and whatever other bits of story that popped up across the game. I also made most of the art for the project, including the board, box, and many of the cards.

Packaging

Before creating the final set for our board and pieces we consulted industrial designers at our college for advice and tips on material usage. We 3D printed our game tokens and made sure that the physical quality of our game-set was durable and up to industry standards. 

Cards

Some of my favorite cards featured in Lucky Dragon.

Award Winning!

Lucky Dragon won the award for "Best Board Game" at the 2018 SCAD Entelechy Awards.