A casual board game for 3-4 players

Purgatory MD is a worker
placement/multiplayer puzzle hybrid, in which players take turns grabbing tiles from a common pool and placing them on their personal board, such as to maximize their score.

You can find a Print & Play here. Rulebook is Italian and English, games last about 15 minutes per player.

What was the idea:

One of the tools I really like is Boardgamizer, which provides a random set of ideas for board game design. Granted, most of the combinations are rubbish, but sometimes there’s something interesting to be found. When I got Hell + Power Plant as theme I designed the game in little more than an hour.

From there it went through several changes, including the theme (trying to heal sinners’ souls was more in tune with the mechanics of the game), but most of the design was done that same day.

What worked:

The game is fast, simple to learn and easy to play. I still haven’t found an optimal strategy and I was able to patch a couple traps that had become evident after a few playtests.

Most new player spent a lot of time playing with the components and rearranging them as best as they can. This toy-like feeling seems to be a really strong point of the game, although better, custom-crafted components would help greatly.

Although the game has a very light theme, the mechanics really help to convey it and the game feels cohesive as a result.

What didn’t work:

Even though the game can be enjoyed as it is, to function properly it requires custom components that I have no idea how to make. The physical act of taking and placing all the little pieces should feel more natural and less annoying. The print & play version is a very rough approximation of the ideal experience.

Some rules have at times caused a bit of confusion during playtest. The current version should have this covered though.