⚠ DEVELOPMENT LOG — ONGOING
A survival board game about outlasting the horde. This is the record of building it — the design decisions, the failed prototypes, and everything still being figured out.
Read the Journal Get AlertsThe essentials — swap in your real rules summary once they're locked.
Coming Soon2–4 players choose who holds the line each round.
Coming SoonSuccess requires stockpiling supply cards before the horde arrives.
Coming SoonRunning dry triggers the next disaster sequence — the tension engine of the game.
Coming SoonEach round the horde grows — placeholder text for how difficulty ramps.
Prototype shots, card art, and table setups — replace these placeholders with real photos.
Where the project stands, and what's coming next.
Defined the horde mechanic and core survival loop. Completed.
First Draft
Idealisation
Support Kits
Border & ZombiesMidjourney was still pretty new back then, and I was curious enough to test it out on these early concepts — some of these backgrounds and assets are AI-generated because I simply couldn't paint scenes like this myself yet. It is what it is; just part of the trail that led to where Carrier's art is now. Our early playtests also ran WAY too long — each game dragged on forever, and that's when we knew we had to go back to the drawing board.
First playable version built and tested with friends. Completed.
Home Printing
Sleeved Cards
Print Shop Finish
Characters Intro
Secret role card fromThis is also around when we started moving away from Midjourney and began drawing things ourselves — squeezing in art sessions during whatever free time we had. We still cut corners where we could (outfits especially), but from here on, the art was ours.
Overhauling the game's mechanics — optimizing systems and cutting redundancies, not building a whole new game. Running structured playtests to tune difficulty and pacing along the way.
Characters
Secret Roles
Encounters
Special ConditionsWe're deep in balancing right now — tightening up Characters, Secret Roles, Encounters, and Special Conditions. Some of it is trimming redundancy, some of it is fixing confusing naming, and some of it is just making sure every card earns its place in the deck.
As our design skills grow, we're moving further from the original Midjourney/AI-assisted art — toward asset packs from itch.io, and eventually hiring dedicated pixel art artists.
Art Direction
Horde Overhaul
Old Box Render
New Box (v1)
New Box (v2)Art is getting more refined with every pass — the survivor and horde designs are both being pushed further through repetition, and the box art has been completely redone from the old placeholder render to a real, finished design.
TBD — placeholder for launch plans.
Coming SoonUpdate placeholder — swap in a real photo and launch details once they're confirmed.
Entries documenting the build — origins, mechanics, art, and playtests.
"Every playtest tore the game apart a little more — and a little closer to what it needed to be."
— Playtest Notes, Session #7New journal entries and playtest calls, sent when there's something worth reading.