In our game systems course, we were tasked with creating a card game for two to four players. Myself and two of my classmates had around three weeks to conceptualize, playtest, and finalize the game in a custom built tool made by our prof, similar to tabletop simulator. We used Excel to organize our cards, and used the tool's functions to import them into Unity. Two in-class playtests took place, in addition to our own in-team playtesting. While the overall gameplay design was worked on by all three of us, I was solely responsible for the instruction booklet. Had this course been on-campus, we would've been able to physically produce the game - alas, it is stuck in its digital format for now.
This was our second experience with creating tabletop games; it took a bit to get into the swing of things. Despite the challenge of designing it virtually, we were able to persevere and focus on creating an engaging experience. We learned a lot more about game balance through this project, handling numbers combined with abstract rules. It was also an interesting look into designing for human psychology - observing how different playtesters used the "cheating" aspect of the rules to their advantage and how our game balance could affect the frequency of cheats.