Pugs and Thugs
October 2019
Co-created with Aylish Turner, Olivia Morales, and Brandon Lee
Made with Magic Set Editor
Card Game
Lead Designer
Pugs and Thugs is a deckbuilding game very similar to Dominion. Players start with a starting deck of chow, the main currency in the world of Pugs and Thugs, and have an opportunity every turn to buy new cards to add to their deck. On each team, there is a Dogfather, who is in charge of collecting resources and organizing the crime family, and the Enforcer, who is tasked with protecting captured territory and attacking rival gangs. Players can order hits on rivals to weaken their forces, conduct shady deals to increase their buying power each turn, or even sabotage other gangs by hiding the "Bad Dog" card in their deck.
Pugs and Thugs was part of board game design project where teams were randomly assigned a set of game criteria to adhere to. My team's assignment was to create a game that incorporated the following: It must have 2 teams of 2 playing against each other, it must be a deckbuilding game, and the only components we were allowed to include were cards. The game tasks two teams of two to work together managing their criminal empires to gain the upper hand in a dog-eat-dog turf war.
On the project, I served as the lead designer, and determined the deckbuilding system on which the game ran. I also designed all of the cards and ran playtesting to ensure that the game was balanced. To implement the 2 v 2 player system, I assigned special roles to both teammates to ensure that while their goals were aligned, the way they played the game differed.
