City of Thieves
An entertaining board game for the whole family - deceivers and criminals alike
Brief
A board game published by Game Inventors sold for the consumer market
Become the leader of a gang of thieves in a medieval city and work your way up to steal the King’s crown jewels!
Responsible for ideation, game design, prototyping, writing, testing, project management, and presentation.
What
City of Thieves (Tyvenes By) is a semi-casual board game for four players. It was released in 2018 and published by Game Inventors. The game is set in a medieval city riddled with crime. As the leader of a gang of thieves, your objective is to steal from the city’s businesses; A butcher, a blacksmith, a market, and the bank are all targets as they provide gold coins for your taking. Coins can be used at the end of each turn at the black market auction house, where willing new members await your hire. Once your gang grows strong enough, an attempt can be made to steal one of the King’s crown jewels - one of bronze, silver, and gold - each one harder to obtain than the last. Thieves come in four variations, differing in experience and strength. The game becomes about bluffing too, as it is important to keep the strength of your thieves a secret for as long as possible. At the beginning and end of a turn, a day or night card is drawn, randomizing a few things on the board, allowing for plenty of replayability. A full game usually goes for 30-45 minutes.
How
The story of how City of Thieves came to be is a fun one and involves a little bit of luck, some skill, and an element of randomness - not unlike the game itself. During a game design session at Artifact, we were practicing mechanics by building simple games out of cardboard and paper. We decided to combine a few elements into one game and went through rapid iterations on a whiteboard. Eventually, we created something entertaining and we were encouraged to do a playtest at a local board game cafe. We spent a long day building a cardboard prototype and illustrating the theme. The playtest went beyond all expectations and we received much positive feedback. We improved a few things, but with time we forgot all about it and the game began to collect dust on our shelf. One day, following a meeting with a business partner, he asked for a game. Following a fun time, he connected us with Game Inventors - a renowned local board game publisher. They visited us for a playtest and liked the game so much that they offered to put it into production. From there, we spent almost a year polishing, testing the user experience, and finalizing the art, until the game was released, in August 2018 at a launch party in the very same board game cafe where we had initially shown the game to the public for the first time.
Reception
The game was received favorably. Players gave it a score of 7.2 out of 10 on boardgamegeek and two critics each gave it 4 out of 5 stars. Reviews can be read on the official Game Inventors page. In 2019 the game was nominated for Legebrancen’s Game of the Year award. The game was shortlisted and made it to the top three. City of Thieves is sold in various retailers in Denmark - among the biggest was Arnold Busck. Bog & Ide, and Faraos Cigarer. The game is still available for purchase online, but as it was released without much fanfare and with no marketing push behind it, it has slowly faded out of popularity.
Responsibility
The game was made by the full team of six at Artifact. From the very first idea to its prototype cardboard state. However, with me leading the playtest with Game Inventors and landing the publication deal, I also became responsible for this relationship after the contract was signed. I became project manager and the main contributor to the development of the game after this, along with our artist. I wrote each little story for every random event, constructed the game rules from top to bottom, and led and hosted user game testing for several months.
