‘Fraudocracy!’ is a one-on-one political satire card game where players use characters with influence hijack parties and rig power structures. It targets fans of games with social commentary. The game uses 3D-printed tiles, each representing a societal figure and containing directional spike values that dictate their individual ‘influence’. It depends not only on which tiles (characters) you get but also how you play them (offensively or defensively). The person with the most power over a party (purple or green) wins. Through its mechanics, the game satirizes how institutional power is often less about who you are and more about how you position yourself—rewarding manipulation, betrayal, and opportunism as viable paths to dominance.
Over Winter Break, I hyper-fixated on the old game franchise ‘Skylanders’. Within 6 of their games, 5 of them feature a minigame called ‘Skystones’. Stones are based on previously defeated in-game enemies, and feature various spike values encompassing them to represent how much damage they do to adjacent stones. I knew I wanted to make something for Game Design using this concept.
The political portion of the game is more of a manifestation of my emotions than an intentional decision. Not that I regret making this game per say – I don’t – but I most likely would have gone with a different theme had there not been political… ‘events’… that transpired during the start of the semester. I’ve been sitting here for like 30 minutes trying to figure out how to word this section, but I’m sure we all know what I’m referring to.
The first challenge was figuring out how to convey dynamic ownership of a card. In a round of Skystones, one card may have its color changed several times, and I wanted to remain faithful to that. The prototype used double-sided index cards with a “Corrupt” (Bad) side and an “Altruist” (Good) side. The spikes were represented with numeric values. I initially wanted 2 designs for each character – one for each side – and require players to flip cards whenever they gained ownership of them.
The first playtest revealed this wouldn’t be a viable mechanic because, not only did it take extremely long to do each time, it was also difficult to do when cards were placed next to each other. I needed to figure out a new way to represent ownership.
After a lot of thought and discussion, I concluded I’d make additional ‘frame’ pieces to magnetically attach to the cards. This change had the unintentional benefit of making the game even more faithful to its inspiration, as Skystones have a colored outline around them.
So I had a decent idea for a game, that’s good; but how do I even make these pieces? The biggest problem was my desire to make them weighted – something paper/cardboard/posterboard is not. It wasn’t until one class whenever Reese asked me to playtest his game, Invasion, which had used 3D printed pieces. I immediately knew I wanted to do the same, completely ignoring the fact I had never used one or anything remotely similar. I used a browser-based modeling software called Tinkercad to create my first model:
I printed the frame too large. But it’s a start! In fact, it felt weirdly invigorating. If you like cool gadgets and gizmos, I highly recommend watching a 3D printer work in real time; It’s absolutely fascinating. A bit of tweaking and a few days later, I printed my next rendition, this time with a correctly sized frame:
Things were going well! I posted this in a discord server, and a few people were quick to ask “why didn’t you just make a snap-fit piece?”; and with some help from an online friend who knows Blender, they edited my model to integrate a snap-fit frame, saving me money on the originally planned magnets.
Things were going well! The next step was to make about 20 more, each with different spike values. Unfortunately though, Tinkercad wasn’t well-suited for such a project. I briefly tried to teach myself Blender and Blockbench, but gave up quickly. I had hit a roadblock, and on top of that, I got busy with other classes and began to stagnate.
A few weeks later, Professor Ames helped me get the ball rolling again during class. I was busy worrying about the weight or thickness of my piece, and stressed about the process of finishing the game. Ames took my model, shrunk it, filled the bed with copies, and printed 16 tiny prototype pieces. I was honestly confused and reluctant, but I let him do his thing; and in a few hours, they were done:
By printing these, Professor Ames was finally (better late than never) help me understand the importance of looking past aesthetic and focusing on mechanics when in the designing stage. This was eye-opening for me, and unfortunately I cannot effectively communicate the impact at 3am.
With newfound motivation, I jumped in a call with another (different) online friend. He works full-time as an engineer, so being proficient in Fusion360, he was able to help me significantly improve my model. He rounded the spikes and corners, aligned the frame with the piece, sloped the spikes, and so much more. My project was finally starting to feel like a real game.
Next, I needed to make 20 cards with different values, so that my friend could model them with the correct spike amounts. I created a spreadsheet with various figures within society to use for the roster. I needed to design their spike values based on how much ‘influence’ that person has in real life. For example, an Editor has more influence (spikes) than a Protester due to their power to alter the narrative.
A lot of this is going to be a retelling of a long interaction between myself and my friend.
He then sent me the models, and I begun printing them on 2 printers at a time.
While these were printing, I was in the lab working on the instruction manual for the game. I took a new approach, and rather than designing it in Microsoft Word like I did with my previous games (for some reason) – I designed it in Adobe Illustrator. I was able to convert a piece file into a topographic image, and use that to incorporate a visual informative guide. I had a ton of fun and was incredibly happy with the result.
I continued until I had all 20 pieces, and left campus at around 11:30pm that WEDNESDAY NIGHT. WHY DO I ALWAYS DO THIS TO MYSELF ITS 4AM CLASS IS IN 4 HOURS. ahem. anyways. Despite saying I learned about prioritizing mechanics over aesthetics, I didn’t – and then proceeded to work on spray painting my pieces until 2am.
Here’s one of my cats Charlie watching me (he’s very cute):
I can confidentially say this was one of the TWO times in my ENTIRE LIFE that I went to bed feeling excited for school; and the second playtest begun in class the next morning. I wasn’t able to create the character portraits at that time, so I temporarily used sticky notes to convey which figure each card represented. I also had to create a temporary playing board/grid out of cardboard, as players would often misperceive them as puzzle pieces and try to connect them.
We played a few rounds, and I gained a LOT of insight into my game. Most importantly though, I needed a way to hide cards from your opponent, or limit the players hand. Flipping them over didn’t work, since the spikes allowed for players to intentionally leave bad cards for the other player. They were too big and there were too many to hold all 9 in one hand, so we needed something else to hold or hide the cards. Professor Ames gave me the idea to create a machine of sorts which would conceal upcoming cards from the player. I went back to the drawing board, and came up with this:
This was shaping up to be one of my all-time favorite projects, but I still needed the actual characters for the cards. I measured my pieces, opened an Illustrator file, and started shamefully AI-generating portraits for them. I told it to generate characters in an Monopoly/Fallout76 art style, and I can’t say it didn’t deliver.
This stage of the design put the cards through many changes, mostly in name and style.
I printed 2 copies, laminated one, and then cut them out. They fit perfectly, and it was incredibly exciting to start seeing my game properly come to fruition.
Next was the card dispenser. Another call with my friend later, I had one designed; but it had one major problem: it took 18 hours to print.
While that was printing, I headed to class for the 3rd playtest.
Playtest 3 was the most popular (for lack of a better term) playtest. After watching several games unfold, it quickly became clear that the corrupt cards were incredibly overpowered, and desperately needed a nerf.
I had become fully invested, and at this point, I was ordering my own spools of textured filament online to use for my final print. But I needed to go check on my tower print.
It worked, but it also didn’t. On one hand, it printed with very few visual issues, which surprised me. Unfortunately, on the other hand, the measurements and model could’ve been better.
The tube was too wide, which allowed for cards to flip or rotate when they were dropped in. The ramp was not steep enough, meaning cards didn’t slide down to the output slot; which was too low, meaning cards got stuck. As much as I was dreading it, I needed to edit the model and print a new one.
And then I procrastinated and jeopardized the quality of my game. This was quite literally the last picture I took, because I never finished. I printed a few of the final pieces with a marble textured filament, and the frames with holographic filament. I started printing my new tower, which with some tweaking, I was able to shave the print time to 10 hours; except I started too late. I quite literally fumbled the bag, and I had no good excuse.
I learned A LOT from this project. I learned how to use a 3D printer, general maintenance as well as how to load/unload filament; I learned about models, their innerworkings, and several methods of saving time by cutting corners; I learned about the concept of tolerance/clearance, and I was reminded that millimeters exist; I used spray paint for the first time, and set a record for the longest I’ve ever stayed up for a school project; There was probably a lot more that I’m struggling to recall on 3 hours of sleep. I wish I could say this experience taught me not to procrastinate, but I can’t imagine myself ever changing.
