Games – Kyle Rowan

Vagrantsong

To date, Vagrantsong is the project I’ve been most proud of as a game designer. From the initial pitch to the very last playtest, I was responsible for Vagrantsong’s story, theme, mechanics, characters, and direction.

Vagrantsong is a 2-4 player fully cooperative boss battler board game inspired by American folklore and ghost stories. Players take control of their choice of 6 Vagrants while aboard the Silver Ferryman, a ghost train that is trying to keep them aboard to steal their souls. As they traverse the train and attempt to unravel its many mysteries in a 30+ hour campaign, players will face off against Haints, lost spirits who have been trapped by Silver Ferryman, and will have to free these ghosts’ souls so that they can save their own.

For technical writing, you can find the Vagrantsong rulebook here, and for examples of my creative writing and design, check out the first two Scenarios here. For reviews and additional information, visit the Vagrantsong page on BoardGameGeek (currently rated at 8.4).

Here are some examples of characters and cards from the game:

You can play the first two Scenarios of Vagrantsong right now on Tabletop Simulator (for free so long as you have TTS). Click on the image below to be brought to the TTS Workshop page.

Malifaux

Malifaux is a tabletop skirmish game set in an alternate 1900s universe that uses a deck of cards to help determine successes and failures throughout the game instead of dice. It’s got a little bit of doom and gloom, a dash of steampunk, a dollop of horror, and a smidgen of Wild West.

It’s a story-driven experience, with the narrative unfolding via actions characters take and those they align with. Over the years, the community has taken part in the direction of the narrative by voting to see who lives and dies, both in-game and in the lore.

I’ve been responsible for the direction of those stories and characters as a writer, editor, and game designer. Over the last 3 years, we released 10 books (including the rulebook), over 27 stories (300k+ words), and hundreds of characters for players to choose from when building their crew. I’m extremely proud of the quality of work the team was able to accomplish in such a short span of time.

If you’re interested in checking out all of the characters and stat cards, head over to the Malifaux Crew Builder (which I was also responsible for managing during development). For reviews and additional information, head over to the Malifaux page on BoardGameGeeek (currently rated a 9.0).

Here are some character concepts from the latest Faction, the Explorer’s Society, that I was responsible for:

Bayou Bash

Bayou Bash is a lighthearted 2-4 player racing board game set in the world of Malifaux. Whoever crosses the finish line first isn’t necessarily declared the winner. Victory is determined by how many fans you get along the way. Players perform wild pun-filled actions to make sure they put on the best show and to put the other racers in the dust.

As a lead designer on this project, I created the actions and flare of the game, and took charge of fine-tuning the rules from iterative playtester feedback. The focus here was purely the fun factor: the ridiculous actions, the absurd events, and over-the-top interactions players can perform.

For reviews and additional information, head over to the Bayou Bash page on BoardGameGeek.

Here are some Racers and various cards I designed:

Darkness Come Rattling: War of the Spirits

Darkness Comes Rattling is a 2-6 player cooperative board game where players try to cleanse the world of corruption and eventually chase down a giant snake and free the sun itself from its belly. This challenging, theme-heavy game was designed by industry legends Kevin Wilson and Aaron Darland.

I designed its full (and completely free!) print-and-play expansion, War of the Spirits. In it, players are given a branching quest system where multiple objectives create the paths they can take. It also provides a different endgame where all of the players can actively participate, which changes based on the board’s current state.

You can download the rules and components for free here. For reviews and more information, head over to the DCR: War of the Spirits page on BoardGameGeek (currently rated an 8.7).

Here are some example cards from the game:

The Other Side

The Other Side is a tabletop miniatures game based in the same world as Malifaux, but at a larger scale. The battles themselves are happening across vast landscapes on Earth, and against armies instead of individuals. Streamlined rules and unique mechanics add a twist to the traditional mass combat genre of tabletop war games.

Before its launch in 2018, I was an editor and contributing writer on the project. I’ve since taken over as design lead, ensuring cohesion between story and gameplay with the design team and freelancers. We are soon releasing its first expansion, which will two new Allegiances.

If you’re interested in all of the characters and their actions, head over to The Other Side Company Builder (which I was also responsible for managing during development). For more information and reviews, head over to The Other Side’s page on BoardGameGeek (currently rated an 8.6).

Novus

Novus was developed in Unity by a handful of devoted indie designers, programmers, and artists. I was fortunate to be a part of the writing and design team, where we aimed to combine Terraria’s exploration and crafting with RPG and tower defense mechanics.

Despite its small team, we had some really big ideas already implemented before it was unfortunately canceled (the plight of too many indie games). I learned a great deal from those experiences, and from those developing the game alongside me.

You can watch a video of a very early prototype here.

Project Sellsword

One personal project I am most fond of is Project Sellsword, a point-and-click adventure game developed in Unity about a sword for hire lost in a forest. In many ways, it’s inspired by Groundhog Day; death only brought the sellsword back to his bed. Before night falls, he has to try to find his way out of the forest.

I used the development of this game to further expand skills outside of my own comfort zone, including pixel art and sound design. But I also learned a great deal about characters and creating “peak and valley” moments with dialogue, setting, and story.

You can find an example of a scene below:

Deepest Depths

The idea behind this personal project was to gain a better understanding of tabletop design principles. Deepest Depths combines tactical movement with traditional card game mechanics. It was played on a 5×5 grid of cards, where placement of characters and locations mattered as much as changing the landscape itself by “breathing” life into the world (an idea that was meant to replicate the waves of the ocean). Each player took control of an old god (like the First to Bloom, an algae-inspired god, and the First to Feed, a shark-inspired god) waking from their slumber, hoping to rule this fully oceanic world. Changing the win condition from a standard health mechanic to a point-based system allowed me to create playstyles for each deck-type that were wildly different from one another.

The game went through many iterations before I felt comfortable enough with the system to give it a Viking’s funeral by setting it off to sea (or, more realistically, canceled to focus on professional projects).

If you’d like to see some of the card concepts, here is a small example of the First to Feed deck.

To see some of the stuff I’ve written over the years, head over to the Writing page!