PROJET MESE: The Board Game

PROJECT MESE: The Board Game is a chaotically enjoyable, secret role-based tactical board game set in the world of Hungarian folk tales.

PROJECT MESE my personal worldbuilding project,  Deciding how to introduce a new world is always the toughest part, but I ultimately landed on a board game, and I choose that format, because I like the tactile, self-contained experience it provides. In this age of AI it is cool to have something in your hand or at least have something that closely resembles that feeling.

The game is fully playable, offering about an hour of engaging gameplay. I designed it to be a perfect 'getaway' title for newbies and players looking to dive deeper into the world of tabletop gaming.

I've included a small snippet of the art's journey:
-It started as some rough toy concepts
-Then I've made them into 3D figurines in zbrush and Maya
-Created a mockup in Maya for the board itself
-For the 3d printing some parts had to be simplified down in order to have the figurines feel better in hand
-Then I handpainted the minis by myself, because I always wanted to give it a try
-Playtested the game with friends and at some venues. Special thanks for Isván Süveg (https://www.artstation.com/adoron) and Attila G.Varga (https://www.artstation.com/attuss) for helping me out!
-Then  I developed a browser-based version of the game, thinking it will make remote testing much easier.
-Finally I've made a mockup of how it should look as a fully digital adaptation in Unity or Unreal. I was aiming for the tactile feel of wood with the board pieces, paper for the cards and icons to emulate what the real world experience provides.

I'm not gonna hide the fact that some parts of the process were made with AI, for example balancing and translating the game or the html gameplay test was done with a mix of Gemini, Claude and ChatGPT and I've made the animations with Seadance 2.0 just for fun.
The cards use a lot of placeholders in order to fill in the blank spaces for testers, so the next step for me will be to continue illustrating the cards and purge the unwanted stuff before it goes to print. Stay tuned for that! ;)

Follow the project on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/project.mese/

If you have questions with the process just shoot me a message.