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Stranded — A Board Game

A pirate-themed board game built for the Technology Student Association competition — 1st at Florida States, 5th in the nation.

June 29, 2022
  • Game Design
  • Fabrication

Built with a team of six for the Technology Student Association (TSA) competition, at the state and national levels. Over a few months we brainstormed, designed, and fabricated the whole game from scratch.

The premise

We started brainstorming in September 2021 and landed almost immediately on a pirate / ocean theme. You, the player, are stranded on an island in the middle of the ocean, and you have to work your way across the board to get home. Along the way you pass through a series of mini-islands, and a set of custom playing cards dictates your moves.

The Stranded box lid — an orange-and-red lava resin surface framed by rough black 'lava rock' edges, the title STRANDED in blue with four inset gemstones.

There are two kinds of cards — risky and chance. Both carry options that can help or hurt you, but the risky cards live up to the name: higher risk, higher reward. I designed and made both card decks myself.

The two custom decks in their boxes — Stranded Risk and Stranded Chance — printed with a green-and-black camouflage pattern.

A hand-cut stack of the camouflage-patterned Stranded Risk cards on the workbench.

Island mini-games

Every island you land on is its own mini-game challenge — ice fishing, a tundra-themed Shoot the Moon, darts, and more. I built the Shoot the Moon mini-game individually, and helped design the box and the game’s miscellaneous components.

The centerpiece of the board is a volcano — you roll the dice down through it to trigger the mini-games. It’s the piece that ties the whole ocean world together and gives the table something to gather around.

The open box interior — compartments holding the black volcano dice piece with a red die, gold gemstone pouches (Sapphire, Emerald, Amethyst), the Risk and Chance card decks, and the Icy Tundra and Jungle Temple bags.

How it did

In February 2022 we brought the game to Florida States, and after competing against hundreds of schools we earned 1st place in our category. Over the next few months we iterated on the design, then took it to US Nationals in June 2022, where we finished 5th in the nation.

For a project that started as a sketch and a theme, watching it hold up on a national stage — and seeing people actually play something we’d invented — was the best part.