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Squadron X
When the world is invaded by Kaiju, a school made of the top pilots in the world must defend the planet from these gigantic monsters, using their giant fighting machines, Zords! They are... Squadron X
Genre - Role-Playing, Action, Adventure, Cooperative
Platform - Tabletop
Production Duration - 12 weeks
Team Size - 5 people
Role - Mechanics Designer, Campaign Quest Designer
Click here to download the project yourself!
DISCLAIMER: Most of the art assets in the rule book were taken online and were mainly used to better illustrate the point.
A Cooperative 'Tokusatsu' Adventure!
The game is set in a world besieged by giant monsters known as Kaiju. Players build up their skills as a pilot upgrade their giant fighting machines known as Zords and fight against the giant creatures to save the academy. The entire theme of the game was inspired heavily by Japanese Tokusatsu drama. Specifically the use of giant robots against gargantuan monsters.
Basic rules to the flow of the game
Battle with the skills of both Pilot and Zords!
Players use both their Pilot avatars with their own customizable Zords. Each has their own Stats that come into play with various parts in the game. The key to combat is both the combat prowess of their units and their own improvisation.
A World of Monsters!
This project allowed our group to develop many Kaijus to players can choose from for their own campaign. In this project, everyone had the opportunity to design their own Kaiju while giving feedback and opinions to each other's work. In my case, I created a Kaiju called Frigar, with a boss gimmick in mind where he is highly resistant to attacks unless the players discover how it's gimmick works.
As shown above, Frigar's main gimmick is that he is highly resistant to damage unless his summoned creatures, Appendos, are destroyed. As a boss character, I imagined Frigar with the figure of an imposing ruler that is protected by their subjects while utilizing very little movement (its weight stat of 10 means it has very low movement speed). I also imagine him to have a spider-like appearance, with the Appendos being spawned from the tips of his legs.
While the Appendos are weak, they would likely be spread out on the map, where Frigar's long range allows him to attack players from his stationary point.
Campaign - A Blight From The Abyss
Alongside the creation of the project's rulebook, we also created a campaign scenario based on our project, I was in charge of the backstory, narrative flow, effects from players' choices, and much of the dialogue and unique characters (especially so for the antagonists) that are introduced in our campaign.
Examples of the characters I created, as well as how the events in the scenarios affect future battles
NOTE: Art assets used here do not belong to me
About the production
IDEATION PHASE
The original idea for the project was loosely based on a tokusatsu show I was watching at the time called 'Gridman', which made use of combining robots.
However, during production, we realized we lacked the time to balance out combined units so a lot of the original design for the rules was changed and the fusion mechanic that was originally planned was unfortunately scrapped. However, we managed to keep the balance between the Pilot and Zord stats to work hand in hand with one another.
pRODUCTION PHASE
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Within production, I was left in charge of the backstory, the stat system and the enemy units, and the campaign scenario.
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When it comes to the stat system, we separated the player unit (the pilots) from their mechas. Most of the role-playing elements come from the pilot stats, while combat comes from their mechas to allow players to better experience their own characters as individuals outside of the mechas they pilot. I even imagine a scenario where the player can end up taking over another mecha with different stats and may end up changing their playstyle to having different mecha stats to work with compared to the players.
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When it comes to creating the campaign scenario, we were originally given a time limit for the campaign's gameplay, so it should not last for too long. However, once that restriction was lifted, it felt like a dream come true for me. There were no limitations to how much I could write and ended up creating an entire script with the idea it was for an episode of an actual tokusatsu show but in the format of a tabletop game. I was even able to come up with how the world works and wrote a backstory and characters for it. I even recall looking back on some tokusatsu series I had watched before to get ideas for the narrative.
post mortem
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The production process for this project was long and hard, from balancing the combat to the clarity of the rules, and even to elements in the campaign's story we wanted to polish.
Despite the stressful time crunches we had to make, this was one of the projects I enjoyed immensely and I still remember how motivated I was each day to return to my laptop and type out my ideas for the gameplay and the campaign's narrative.
