Abu Simbel was the first game I made at CoLab. I was hired to develop a game for the upcoming Egyptian-themed curriculum. A central piece of the material would be the first UNESCO operation to preserve Nubian monuments from the flooding of the Nile, a result of the completion of the Aswan Dam.

I tried to emulated the cooperative experience of Pandemic Legacy. Abu Simbel became a card-based game where players raced against time to save temples before the Nile could swallow them up. The actions available to them would be to Build, Dismantle, Transport, Move and Discard.

In a turn, a player could play all of their cards but they have to keep in mind the initiative order at the top of the screen. So all Build cards would be played and then Dismantle, etc. The intention was to keep students aware of a condition that could mess with their plans and get them talking to each other. After all players had played their cards, all cards are resolved.

After the Resolution phase, players would meet Director General Vittorino Veronese and depending on their performance they would see either a happy or panicked Vittorino. Players can then vote for upgrades to purchase with their surplus. If there are ties, the upgrade is chosen randomly among the tied choices.

The game ended up being relatively successful for a first go. There were a lot of bugs and my server code was a mess. (Bless you, Michael, for reading through that mess.) But the kids enjoyed it! Hearing them urgently call out what they planned to do with their cards was a great sign of their engagement.

Upon reflection, my game design was hindered by scope creep and some clunky mechanics. A lot of my time was also spent getting Construct 3 to serve our purposes while testing the game. There could be some more iteration to improve upon it, such as adding trading mechanics, tightening the cards, and optimizing the resolution time.