In my last year of college, a few classmates and I came together to design a game. The end result surpassed our modest expectations as a team of students. What is this game I speak of? Sillypolitik is a card strategy game about a laundromat owner taking over the world while descending into psychosis. In it, you play as Rufus Krieg, a vindictive, power-hungry laundromat owner as he battles higher and higher layers of government, starting with his home owner’s association. Spurred on by the presumed-dead, 3½ star general Kapusta, you vie for control of institutions ranging from dining courts to world governments.

You can find a link to the game here.

The project was a resounding success in my book. We presented the game at two different conferences / conventions and won the Fan Favorite award at one of them! With the game released and no longer getting updates, I wanted to share my team’s development journey with you all.

The Idea

I kicked around the idea of a Sillypolitik starting in 2023. As an avid fan of grand strategy games, I wanted to see a title that focused more on the internal politics of a nation: one that allowed you to pit rival parts of a government against one another. I whipped up a crude prototype in Unity, of which little remains except for this screenshot: 

I knew from the start that I wanted a retro aesthetic, but at the time I was looking at more of an 80s interface style. I also wanted a deranged looking character advising you in the style of a Metal Gear conversation, where the only animation was flipping between images  with a character’s mouth open or shut. Story-wise, I was pretty confident about the progression I wanted from the beginning. I wanted a protagonist losing his marbles as he took over increasingly important parts of society. 

But despite liking these ideas, I decided to shelve them for a while, not having the resources to make a game of such scope. I figured if I had a team, it might be doable. 

The Game Begins!

In August of 2024, I took a class called Game Development Practicum. It was a pretty straightforward course: you find a group of people, and then you make a game together. The week before class, I wrote up the idea more thoroughly and pitched the idea to my programmer friend Mack, who was also taking the same course. He, also a fan of strategy games, liked the idea and agreed to help. So day 1, while most people were still figuring out what they wanted to make, we had two people and a ready game pitch, which we spoke at the front of the room. To my surprise, so many people were interested that I had to start turning people away. I’ve had bad experiences with passion projects that got too big. 

Of the people who joined, we had quite a few heavy hitters. My artist friend Anna joined; She and I had worked together before on a traumatically bad parkour game. I would pay anyone a large sum of money to remove it from the internet forever. She agreed to do the 2D art and production design. We got a few other people that we were less familiar with, but proved to be just as capable. George signed on to do the UI work. Steven agreed to help with the programming, Cam offered to do 3D modelling and environment art, and Sam offered to help with the design and game audio.  

The first challenge we faced was the lack of a proper gameplay loop. Not much work could be done without that. Furthermore, most of the team only had vague impressions of what we were creating. To solve that, we sat down for four hours in a crowded underground Starbucks, and together hashed out a minimal level. That initial prototype, smeared on crinkled index cards, became the foundation for the rest of the game. He won an early game by illegally transferring funds to his opponent’s cards over and over again, causing them to lose legitimacy and be destroyed. We also established rules that you couldn’t directly replace an opponent’s control points, otherwise you could win the game on turn 1 every time.

The Vertical Slice

Our goal for the first semester was to make a vertical slice, or one complete tutorial level, while also setting up the tools to rapidly program another five levels the next semester. Programming got to work making those tools, Anna and Cam collaborated to make the game art and environment. Sam had the challenge of translating my incoherent and contradictory audio requests (which mostly consisted of me saying, what if you smash these two completely different genres of music together). 

Early on, Mack raised the point that if this was going to be a single player card game, we would need to develop an AI for the player to fight against. I contacted my good friend Nathanael, a competent if unserious computer scientist who actually knows how those things work, unlike us visual scripting cavemen. We had him playtest the game, and asked him how he would approach the issue. It was evidently, however, a gargantuan task that would become Mack’s primary focus for the remainder of the project. Thank you for your sacrifice Mack. 

I spent my time designing levels 3, 4 and 5. Hobert University wasn’t designed until much later, when it was pointed out that a jump from 3 cards in the HOA to 8 in Bungleburg was an overwhelming amount for new players. I also fleshed out the game narrative, and the lore, and started writing the early scenes between Rufus, Ashley, and Kapusta. By the end of November 2025, we had largely accomplished what we set out to do, and a little extra. We had a functioning HOA level and a dysfunctional Bungleburg level, with card abilities, types, and a janky dialogue system.

Conclusion

I hope that this article provided you some insight on what the early stages of game development look like – even if only for an indie game. Sillypolitik is to date my favorite project in any medium I’ve ever worked on. In future logs, should there be popular demand, I’ll examine the game’s art, design, programming, or minor accolades in greater detail. In the meanwhile, I keep working on my own personal projects with the limited amount of free time that I have available.

What about you? Have you ever designed a game before? Join our Discord and let us know!