Boomer Beach
Designing a chaotic, joyful territory control board game from napkin sketches to a fully playtested prototype in three iterative sprints.
Four grumpy elders.
One contested beach.
Boomer Beach is a 2 to 4 player territory control board game set on a slice of Virginia Beach. Players take on the personas of eccentric elders, each armed with a metal detector and a vendetta, racing to claim the most sandy real estate before a tidal wave ends it all.
My role spanned Version 1 mechanics and rules, prototype building, playtesting, rulebook design, and iterating rules post playtest. This case study chronicles how we transformed a chaotic first prototype into a tight, fun experience through structured UX research.
Fun is easy to imagine.
Hard to engineer.
Our early designs were brimming with ideas, including treasures, traps, teams, trade mechanics, and point bonuses. The complexity looked exciting on paper but created a poor player experience: rules confusion, downtime, and players disengaged from the core fantasy of beachcombing chaos.
The game has too many elements, making it difficult to understand the rules.
Without reaching the treasure phase, the game becomes a little boring. Treasure needs to play a more central role.
Games are going on for a while. We need either more tidal waves or a thinner deck to control pacing.
Three versions.
One tightening story.
We ran structured playtests after each prototype sprint, gathering qualitative feedback and watching where players stumbled, checked out, or lit up with delight.
Everything and the Kitchen Sink
Version 1 started as a brainstorm made physical. Players could form teams, trade cards, earn point bonuses for large territories. The board was a hand-drawn grid on folded paper. The ambition was high. The playability, less so.
Finding the Right Constraints
Version 2 sharpened start positions to four corners, introduced the beach towel as a safe home base, and capped player count at four. The oldest player going first became a thematic delight, perfectly in the spirit of grumpy elders asserting seniority.
The Game Finds Itself
The most significant iteration. We rebuilt the event card system, clarified all wave mechanics, redesigned the treasure reveal as an end game dramatic moment, and moved from vague draw a card instructions to specific visual card designs with rules printed directly on them.
What playtesting revealed
Two structured playtest sessions with external participants surfaced patterns that pure design thinking could not predict. These three insights drove the most impactful redesign decisions.
Complexity is Not Depth
Players wanted strategic decisions, not rule overhead. Removing team mechanics, card trading, and territory bonuses paradoxically increased engagement. The core territory battle became sharper and more legible for everyone.
Pacing is a Design Problem
Turn duration was a silent killer. Placing territory pieces one at a time felt tedious. The solution was physical: chunkier 3D pieces that are easy to grab, plus a visible wave tracker so no mechanic gets forgotten mid-round.
Drama Needs Scaffolding
The tidal wave end game was the most exciting moment but players forgot it was coming. Moving wave card draws to the start of rounds, and adding a visible tracker, transformed anxiety into anticipation.
A cohesive visual language
for chaotic fun
Each card type serves a distinct interaction model. The visual design uses a warm coastal palette with immediate iconography. Players need to read cards fast, mid-chaos.
Cards
Pieces
What we shipped.
What we learned.
Players could explain rules back to a new player after one read through
Self-contained card text eliminated need to reference rulebook mid-game
Estimated 30 percent reduction in turn duration through 3D pieces and clearer movement rules
The tidal wave finale became the unanimous highlight of every playtest session
Personal Takeaways
My biggest lesson: game design and UX design share the same core challenge. You are designing for a mental model you cannot fully see.
Every rule that seemed obvious to us was a stumbling block for first-time players. Playtesting is not validation. It is discovery.
The hardest UX decisions were never about adding features. They were about what to cut.