Star Wars Racer Devs Test Roguelite Progression as a Board Game
The secret to designing phenomenal games isn’t always found in complex code or endless spreadsheets—it’s often hiding in a simple game of Monopoly.
Years ago, game designers found a surprisingly effective shortcut for validating game mechanics: prototyping. The idea that you can learn and validate an entire system simply by playing a board game is a concept that is now reshaping how developers approach system design.
This methodology was first explored when Jake Solomon created a rudimentary board game prototype for the Firaxis reboot of XCOM. This wasn’t about creating a finished product; it was about getting creative ideas across and figuring out where the genuine fun lay, without committing to a complex engine.
The principle proved so potent that it has since been applied to vastly different genres. The same board game structure and progression system concept was later used to prototype gameplay for high-speed arcade racers, such as Star Wars Galactic Racer.
As Fuse Games’ creative director Kieran Crimmins put it, you simply cannot know if you can truly feel a system until you can play it. This philosophy speaks to the necessity of immediate, tactile feedback.
When thinking about complex systems like racing games, developers often default to in-software engines, but they argue that there is still a crucial step missing: the moment-to-moment experience.
By decoupling themselves from a specific prototype and engaging with the system in a board game format, designers can focus on the core mechanics. In this method, the board game simulates progression: players earn rewards that allow them to spend credits on upgrades, new parts, or entirely new abilities.
This structure mirrors the successful progression system found in modern roguelite games, where unlocking new items and abilities is built around a pool of random elements and permanent upgrades that carry over between runs.
This approach provides an invaluable tool for rapid iteration. Rather than spending weeks building out complex mechanics, designers can use simple tools—Post-its, scribbles, and dice—to validate the emotional response to core systems in a single day.
Ultimately, the takeaway is that there is a prototyping tool for every kind of system you want to explore. The key is choosing the quickest path to validation, allowing designers to focus on validating the feeling of the experience rather than getting bogged down in technical details.
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