Overview
World Beyond War is a global group focused on ending war and promoting lasting peace.
For this project, we were asked to design a tabletop game about war, but with a clear anti-war message.
Challenge
The real challenge wasn’t about visuals or narrative. It was figuring out a game system that didn’t simply reward domination or aggression, which is so often the default in war-themed games.
Our task was to design a game where:
The system also needed to support:
How do you design tension, challenge, and progression in a war setting but without classical war mechanics like violence, force, and defeating other players?
approach
We approached the project as a systems design challenge, focusing less on simply telling a story about peace and more on building in incentives that made cooperation, learning, and shared responsibility the most effective paths forward.
Design highlights
In the following sections, I’ll walk through some of the design choices that shaped the game: how we approached the card system, resource mechanics, interface, and the overall player experience.
Each example illustrates how research and playtesting informed our decisions, helping us create a more cohesive and engaging cooperative experience.
Systems First
Instead of deciding what players should do, we asked ourselves:
As a result, we decided to focus on the following areas:
Key System Decisions
1. Peace is the condition to win
When one player wins, everyone wins.
Stability goes down at the beginning of each turn.
This leads to:
In this system, time is your main challenge, not the other players.
We designed the turn structure to keep up the pressure by lowering stability each round, instead of focusing on player conflict.
3. Strategic player interaction instead of combat
Non-combat PvP exists through:
When rules are clear and time is limited, negotiations stay on track.
The right amount of structure adds just enough tension to keep things interesting, without letting the game spiral out of control.
4. Transparency as a core rule
Every card drawn, action taken, and resource used is visible to everyone playing.
This means:
Fairness is not just up to the players. It is built right into the game itself.
5. Power should be used responsibly
High-impact mechanics (like canceling actions) are:
Players gain power in the system by acting responsibly, rather than by trying to control others.
Supporting Mechanics
We didn’t treat these as isolated features. Instead, we focused on making sure each part works together toward the same behavioral goals, so the experience feels cohesive and purposeful.
The game explores what happens when humans set out to build a new home on Mars and encounter an alien species for the first time.
A language barrier leads the Martians to see humans as invaders. To bridge that gap, players focus on gathering resources, strengthening education, and building stability: ultimately working toward a translator that can deliver a simple message: “We come in peace!”
Instead of casting the aliens as adversaries, the story centers on misunderstanding and fear as the real obstacles.
That perspective shaped our game mechanics: players succeed by building trust through communication, education, and a sense of stability.
Outcome
In the end, we built a fully playable tabletop game, 'WE COME IN PEACE!'.
We tested and improved it through several playtest sessions and also made a version in Tabletop Simulator.
Our game successfully
Reflections
This project was a reminder that the best systems guide people by design, not by telling them what to do.
I learned to focus on building mechanics that encourage the right actions, so instructions become almost unnecessary.
Many of these skills are directly applicable to product, UX, and service design.
