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The Levees Were Dry is a 12 card low-skill strategy push-your-luck game where you compete against your fellow farmers to harvest the most wheat before your land floods and you become a vengeful ghost.

In The Levees Were Dry, the harvest season has come around once again, and you and your fellow farmers are scrambling to reap as much as you’ve sown! In a frantic 12-card format, compete with 3 - 6 of your friends to harvest as much as you can each season! But be warned, each day you wait will flood a levee, cutting off access to surrounding crops; not to mention rival farmers aiming to steal half your hard-earned produce! What’s more, is that farmers stopped by the flooded levees will come to haunt you as Harvest Ghosts and wait for your downfall, so plan your harvest!

The winner of the 2023 Volition Design Award for Galactic Excellence!

Exhibited at Bradley's FUSE 2023 showcase!

  • Roles: Team Lead, Creative Director, System Designer
  • Production Cycle: 02/22 - 05/23
  • Collaborated on designing gameplay such as the Harvest Ghost System and River System
  • Iterated on a prototype originally made for the BoardGameGeek 9-Card Game Contest
  • Exhibited at Bradley's 2023 FUSE: https://bradleyinteractive.com/2023/exhibits/the-levees-were-dry/

River System

  • The River System mandates how cards will flip to be face up to display a point value, while at the same time making players who are standing on those spaces into Harvest Ghosts
  • Initially was only vertical or horizontal, and was determined by the roll of two d6, where one die was the row and the other was the column on a board of 9 cards
  • Issues encountered:
    • Games would end too fast and the spaces flipped felt too arbitrary
    • Players would stand in the center of the "board" for the entire game because there was no reason not to
    • Having 1 + 4, 2 + 5, and 3 + 6 all represent the same thing with the d6s felt overengineered
    • Rolling a previous tile didn't do anything and felt like a meaningless choice
  • How I worked to fix these issues:
    • Changed the board to be bigger, using 12 cards instead of 9, and a d12 instead of 2 d6. This made games longer, but also accommodated more players
    • Added overflow system, so if a space has already flipped, the next one after it flips. This prevents players from standing in the center the whole game

An early prototype of The Levees Were Dry using cardboard and paper before deciding on the iteration using 12 cards

Printed cards that include the basic rules and a glossary of important terms demonstrating a potential game layout below

Harvest Ghosts

  • When a card a player is on gets flooded by the River System, a player becomes a Harvest Ghost
  • Initially, Harvest Ghosts could only move to a flooded space adjacent to them, but could gain points by standing next to players who might become Harvest Ghosts the following turn as a comeback mechanic
  • Issues encountered:
    • Playtesters got frustrated they could not move anywhere on the board
    • Because movement was so restricted, this "comeback" mechanic was severely underwhelming
    • Harvest Ghosts had to share points with other ghosts who were adjacent to a newly formed Harvest Ghost
  • How I worked to fix these issues:
    • Allowed Harvest Ghosts to move anywhere that was flooded
    • Made it so Harvest Ghosts don't have to share their points with other ghosts, whereas other players do