Queer Spaces is a board game concept that I made as the final project of my two-quarter Gender and Sexuality in World Civilizations sequence. My goal was to create a board game that simulated the challenge of establishing queer spaces within a community. I landed on a cooperative game where each player plays as a queer advocacy group leader attempting to manage both their own resources and a shared pool of resources. This game was conceptualized and developed over the course of about a week, and as this was an individual project, all aspects, designs, rules, and component mockups were done by me in that time. 

In order to play cards, complete goals, and contribute to overcoming Challenge cards, players will need to manage three types of resources: Funds, Support, and Publicity. Each player has their own individual resource tracker on their Player Board (see left), that allows them to play their Action Cards. They can spend actions to transfer their resources to the central board, but at that point they can't really get them back. The central board's resources are used to complete Challenge Cards (which add to the Peril track and can reset the Momentum meter), and finish Goals. 

The Challenge Track is the main threat for the players to watch. Challenge Cards are set along the track from top to bottom, and at the end of each Action Phase, the bottom card is resolved. The trick is that the Challenge Deck has two different types of card backings. Some cards have a red X on the back, which means that they are set on the track face-down. This adds the difficulty of needing to prepare for anything when a face-down card is coming up, while also achieving the narrative goal of unforseen circumstances appearing to throw a wrench in well-thought out plans. 

The final major feature of the game is the Momentum Track. This was born out of the narrative desire for players to feel like their successes would compound on each other. On the third, seventh, and tenth spaces on the track, there are various rewards. As an action, they can choose to empty the track and claim any rewards they have currently unlocked on it. The rewards compound and get significantly better at each stage, so they are encouraged to push their luck. Alternatively, though, certain Challenge Cards can reset the Momentum Track, and when that happens, a marker is put into the Momentum Reset Track, which has very concerning penalties. These markers can be removed by filling up the Momentum Track. The more momentum you carry with you, the harder it hits you when failure strikes.

As this game was produced only conceptually, no physical playtest was made. The biggest concern that I would look out for in a playtest would be to see how the momentum track is interacted with. Realistically, it would also have a heavy focus on card balance for Action Cards, Challenge Cards, and Goal Cards, but because I only generated two examples for each type of card, that isn't something that I have a current concern about when it comes to how the game flows. 

For the Momentum Track, I think the biggest concern would be that it's too hard to fill and too easy to get messed with. Additionally, the penalties from the reset track are extremely damaging and could just spiral the game into an unrecoverable loss. I think that this can be amended by both increasing the reset track, as well as decreasing the length of the Momentum track. 

In terms of design, I think a future iteration of the game would be less track- and grid-dependant, because currently it doesn't look very interesting. I think this could even be amended by making some of the tracks wheels as opposed to straight grids, or even revising full mechanics to make it more visually interesting.