Let’s take a look at the system design of Super Squad High today! The game has three core pillars of play – schoolwork, social life, and superhero-ing. Each one represents a challenge players must devote time and attention to, in order to achieve victory. Sarah and I took extra care during development to make sure that each pillar supports the others and interlocks in a single larger puzzle for players to solve. We strive to make highly thematic games, so it was important that each pillar help tell the story of young superheroes balancing their lives.
Schoolwork is driven by the grades track. Each player has their own track on their player board. Each day, players draw new schoolwork tokens, representing homework or other assignments to complete towards academic success. Taking an action at a matching classroom completes a schoolwork token, which improves your hero’s grades. Higher grades allow you to “leave the house” at the start of a day with more costume cards in your hand, giving you more options to fight crime. Like real homework, incomplete schoolwork piles up from day to day. If you end a day with an F grade, you lose the game – heroes need to set a good example as students too.
Social life is key to victory in Super Squad High. The villain threatening your city is secretly one of your classmates at school! To find the villain, you need to earn the trust of classmates, who reveal clues that point to the identity of the villain. You gain a classmate’s trust by building a relationship. As an action, you can chat with classmates to learn their likes, fears, and passions. Then take them on a meetup at the dance club, coffee shop, museum or other locations in town.
Meetups are narrative social encounters that create opportunities for story moments (and generally result in laughter around the table). Another player reads you a series of prompts from a Meetup card. You give a creative answer to each prompt that expresses a trait you have learned about the classmate. Providing answers that match all of their traits wins them over, and you choose to become besties or sweethearts with them. Once a classmate is in a relationship, you gain the ability to use their Help action to complete schoolwork or gain new costume cards with greater efficiency.
Superhero is the third and final role players assume in the game. As heroes, you fight crimes that threaten neighborhoods on the city board, using costume cards and powers to defeat them. Crimefighting competes with schoolwork and socializing for your very limited time each day. If things go wrong, you could end up missing an important class or opportunity to chat or meetup with a classmate, or even put classmates and locations you need in danger! Successfully fighting crime earns you rewards, including Likes to improve your confidence as a hero and insight to complete schoolwork.
Decisions made in any of the three spaces affects your options in the other two. Each turn brims with choices. Balancing your actions each day among all three pillars of play is necessary to win the game.
Thanks for following along as we explore the design journey of the game. Join us tomorrow as we dig deeper into Classmates and Meetups!