Lines of Questioning is a game of courtroom drama. You are a lawyer cross-examining a witness who has something to hide. To get the information you need, you will have to lead the witness through a series of little questions that build up to a big reveal—or trap the witness with his or her own words.

A free-flowing iterative process brought me to Lines of Questioning‘s current design. I started out building an entirely different game meant to simulate a problematic attorney-client relationship. Playtesting demonstrated what was working and what wasn’t, and over many stages I reshaped the game both mechanically and thematically to focus on the best elements.

From an artistic perspective, Lines of Questioning is all about having limited control over one’s environment. The biggest design challenge I faced was tuning the game so that the player feels him- or herself subject to forces that are entirely beyond control, while still having enough influence over the situation to be able to make meaningful decisions. The later iterations of the game were entirely focused on establishing that balance.

While Lines of Questioning doesn’t look like a courtroom, it uses abstraction to help give players the feeling of a cross-examination that’s going awry. I’m very happy with where the design landed, and I greatly enjoyed this foray into more artistic, thematically-driven work.

Check out the rules for Lines of Questioning.