Overview
Read the Rulebook: PDF Here!
Description: VampEmpires is a competitive board game where you battle for control of the Vatican as one of 4 unique Vampires. Play as the scheming Baroness, the iron-fisted Tyrant, the Lumbering Beast, or the Chaotic Feathered One – and use underhanded rituals or raw strength to get your way.
This project was created for IGME-602: Game Design.
Project Length: October 2025 – December 2025
My Contribution
For this project, I worked as our game designer, writer, and instructional designer. I created the outline for our gameplay loop as well as o pipeline for character development. Other responsibilities included:
- Providing game pieces for prototyping
- Managing documentation
- Running playtests
- Organizing feedback
- Assisted in art direction for character boards & rulesets
As one of our game designers, I worked on creating our gameplay loop as well as developing our characters. One of our main inspirations was Root, and we wanted to utilize their 3-phased turn order in our game as well. I also created and developed our setup rules, which were inspired by traditional tarot shuffling. We wanted to create a sense of chaos and unpredictability, which we feel we achieved by having players throw pieces to determine the positions of communities.
Arguably the biggest part of our game are the Vampires. I helped create a template, outline, and resources to create Vampires quickly. I created a list of different playstyles that the game could accommodate, as well as a template for my teammates to use for their characters.
The Baroness was the character I spent the most time creating. She was created with the intention of being a character who helped their enemies – until she used the resources they gave her to destroy them at the end of the game. I wanted to incorporate unique pieces to the game, so she had the ability to build trade routes that would allow players to teleport across the map. These teleports would benefit The Baroness, making it a conscious decision players would have to make to empower her along with themselves.
As one of our instructional designers, I worked to create a instruction booklet that created a smooth transition into gameplay. This was surprisingly challenging, especially as due to the game’s complexity our pages would quickly balloon in size. I worked to cut it down and introduce some lore throughout the instructions to give a brief reprieve from the rules.
Josh Chen 