Bullets and Teeth
and Aliens
The second installment in the Bullets and Teeth universe sends players to the Red Planet as Crewmembers to the overruling Science Corporation. Their mission is to exterminate the native insectile lifeforms and make way for a new resort destination. You might die, but that’s a risk they’re willing to take.
Designed by Gavin Valentine and Kevin Roberson
Artwork by Gavin Valentine
Design Walkthrough Video
Marketing Video
Design Goals
Target Audience
Ages 13+
Semi-Advanced
Players who enjoy Commander Magic and Hearthstone Solo Adventures
Rules light, Fasted Paced
Enable player stories though exciting moments of variance
Strategic Co-Op Gameplay
Maintain Bullets and Teeth gameplay while making meaningful additions to expand strategic decisions and game story
Challenges
Overbearing Co-op Players
Solution: Use the Bait! system to clearly indicate who’s turn it is and who is choosing what cards to play.
Replayability
Solution: Create mission cards that discard other missions as you play, causing players to not see every mission card every game. Multiple final bosses of different difficulty levels and overlapping systems of variance keep play unique every time.
Cross-Turn Play
Solution: The stun mechanic allows players to stun aliens on their turn with the alien remaining stunned until the Bait’s turn. New Teamups card type isolate cross-play to specific cards to simplify resolution.
Design Highlights
Teamup Card Type
Teamups replace Traps in Bullets and Teeth and Aliens. Not only are they a clear indicator to players that this version is co-op, they also allow us to control cross-turn play and keep card resolution simple.
Players will need to carefully work together to decide who needs to play what cards to survive the alien horde, complete missions, and ultimately defeat the Chitin Titan.
Missions Deck
Expanding on locations from Bullets and Teeth I created a missions deck with five different card
types to keep players on their toes.
Event Cards are opportunities for players to choose a short term gain or an upgrade.
Crises are events that make things go from bad to worse. These events create emergent narratives and force players
to adapt.Overtime cards are optional challenges of extraordinary difficulty and reward, allowing veteran players to push themselves further and newcomers to
opt out.Bosses lurk in the missions deck waiting to devour the players. Each takes a different strategy to defeat.
Finally, Delves dynamically change the pace of the game, making it harder for players to survive and changing the amount of time they’ll have to be prepared for the final boss.
Upgrades
Upgrades are cards that stay on the board in front of the player and augment the cards they play. Upgrades are gained as a reward for completing missions and create a way for players to invest in a longer term strategy and chunk gameplay complexity.
Only two upgrades are allowed per player, keeping interaction complexity low and creating meaningful decisions about what to keep and what to discard.
There are over 40 unique upgrades which change the way each game unfolds.
The Final Bosses
To create replayability and a scale of complexity, I designed a final boss difficulty system. Players will start with Molten Larva, our level 1 boss, to learn the rule set and gain confidence before increasing the difficulty until finally taking on the Chitin Titan. The mission deck follows this structure insuring players are exposed to the card types in a way that isn’t overwhelming.
The dreaded Chitin Titan waits for our players at the bottom of the missions deck. Only the most veteran of players will defeat it. Bullets and Teeth and Aliens is inspired by the rogue-like genre, creating replayability through knowledge-based gameplay.
Machinations Simulation
In order to help us pace the game correctly I built a simulation of the missions deck in Machinations. By identifying an average resolution time to each card in the deck we were able to track the length of the game and make meaningful changes to hit our target game length of 30 minutes.
