The Road Creative Project

3 to 8 players with a closed hand are dealt a knife card, clothes card, and 3 food cards. This is their starting hand. At the beginning of each turn, players scavenge, or draw one card from a stack of 52 called the “scavenge pile.” Better weapons, additional food, additional clothes, and a rare cart can all be scavenged from that pile. Players are constrained to a maximum of five cards when their turn ends. On a turn, players have several options. First, they can attack another player. In doing so, the attacking player has to consume and discard a food card, while the defending player does not. Both attacking and defending players reveal their highest quality weapon. Every weapon can attack without restraint, except for the gun. If the attack, or defending player has no bullet, the gun cannot be used, and if not backup weapon is available, they lose immediately. Both players are assigned dice according the quality of their weapon. Knife cards receive one dice, flare gun cards get two, bow and arrow cards get three, and gun cards get four. Each player rolls their die and counts up the total amount that they rolled. Whoever has the highest total wins the fight and the other player dies. Both attacking and defending players can die. When a player dies, they reveal their hand and lay their cards on the table face up, and the winner of the fight can steal up to two card from the dying player’s hand. Second, players can steal rather than scavenging. If a player has died or is sleeping, they reveal their cards and lay them on the table face up. Instead of scavenging, players can steal only one card from any of theses piles, and then can proceed to other actions in their turn. Third, in the case that a player is running low on food, they can sleep that turn. Sleeping players cannot scavenge, steal, or attack on their turn, and they reveal their hand. At the end of each turn, players consume and discard a food card, as if to eat. Players that cannot eat at the end of their turn die. Sleeping players do not have to eat at the end of their turn. In addition, if a player has no clothing cards at the end of their turn, they die. Lastly, at any time during their turn, players can discard any card they do not desire. These discarded but not consumed cards are placed back into the scavenge pile at the bottom. Good Luck!

The novel revolves around survival. That is the characters’ only real struggle and we wanted to reflect that in a survival game. We decided against a game involving teamwork because, even though the man and his son work together, the world they live in is truly every man for himself. There are some examples of teamwork, but for the most part, the man and his son are alone and helpless. When creating items we kept in mind the value of each. For example, there is only one gun in the entire deck. In the novel, a gun was considered the most valuable thing one could find. There are also only two flare guns for the same reason. The bow and arrow however, are more common in the deck as they can be easily created in the novel. We also used similar reasoning when assigning dice quantities to each weapon. We gave the gun four dice as it is the most powerful weapon one could possess. It can only be used with a bullet, so we decided to keep the two separate and rare. A bow and arrow has similar characteristics to a gun but less powerful and less accurate. Therefore, we gave it three dice. The flare gun cannot kill as efficiently as the previous two weapons, but possesses the range that a knife does not. We gave it two dice. Lastly, the knife is the weakest weapon and we it allotted one dice. Warm and food are also huge factors in the novel’s characters’ survival and we implement this into the game as well. Players die without food or clothing so maintaining the two are important in the game, as well as in the book. We added stealing and the related game mechanics into the game to mirror the instances in the book where the characters were stolen from. While the game is played with a closed hand, players that steal from others can inspect their victim’s hand and choose a card. In the book, the characters are stolen from when they were unable to protect their belongings and the thief had the chance to inspect their stores. Finally, each turn players scavenge a card. At every opportunity, the characters scavenged what they could to survive, and so we decided that every turn players scavenge a card. In addition, a cart was added to echo the cart the characters used to carry more item than usual. There are some aspects that we added to make the game playable. Sleeping was added to give players a way to preserve their life and remain longer in the game. There are disadvantages to sleeping, so players are forced to either sleep or attack. The competitive aspect was also added. There is some competition in the novel but it is rare. The competition our game creates is to make the game more enjoyable and engaging. The book was slow and dull at some points and we did not want to make a game as such.