Fernmere
Game Development | 2025 | World Building, Game Mechanic Development, Illustration
A cozy, cooperative board game set in a whimsical woodland realm of small animal-folk. Players gather resources, build communal structures, and uncover Firefly Fragments to restore balance to Fernmere before the light fades. With changing seasonal aspects that shift tone and strategy, the game blends light resource management, collaborative decision-making, and narrative mystery into a warm yet tense race to rekindle the Great Lantern.
Building Worlds
Creating Fernmere
The Brief & The Goal
The Idea & The Magic
This project's goal emphasised page layout design and creating meaningful imagery. Fernmere: The Vanishing Fireflies was developed as a cooperative board game that integrates narrative and mechanics into a unified experience. The game applies core systems design principles by creating an interconnected loop of resource gathering, building, and communal progression, ensuring that every mechanical action reinforces the central theme of restoring balance. Seasonal Aspects introduce dynamic systemic variation, shifting tone and strategy while maintaining structural clarity.
The Firefly Track functions as a time-pressure mechanic, encouraging collaboration and shared decision-making rather than competitive optimisation. By embedding story progression within mechanical milestones, such as revealing Firefly Fragments through communal builds, the game aligns player action with narrative consequence. Ultimately, the design demonstrates how atmosphere, player interaction, and mechanical structure can operate together to create a meaningful and emotionally resonant play experience.
In designing Fernmere: the vanishing Fireflies, I set out to create a game that feels like a living folk tale; warm, whimsical, and just a little mysterious. My inspiration comes from cozy woodland narratives such as The Wind in the Willows and Brambly Hedge, the atmospheric wonder of Studio Ghibli, and the reflective, player-driven storytelling of games like Wonderhome and Everdell. The mechanics were a blend between Everdell and Catan, with a slight FATE system twist. For this project I designed the gamebook layout and illustrations used throughout on the gamecards, tiles, and board.
Fernmere
Game Book
For this project I created a board game that blends Everdell and Catan, with a slight FATE system twist. The final project incorporated all the assets of the physical game; the board, the tiles, the cards and the tokens, and the game book.
Fernmere
Example Playing Cards
The Mystery Deck Cards are used in gameplay if a player chooses to draw one on their turn. Below are a few examples of the 20 card deck.