Tower Defense in Egypt
Number of Players
3-4
Recommended Ages
10+
Time to Play
60-90 minutes
Mechanics Used
Tower Defense, Dice Rolling, 3v1 cooperative
Elevator Pitch
Completion Status
A strategic dice rolling tower defense game where one player is Napoleon facing down the mummy hordes of Egypt while trying to loot as much treasure as possible.
Complete. Ready to publish. Changes needed to rulebook.
To loot or shoot?
Fun fact: Napoleon faced a massive army of mummies during his Egyptian Campaign. Kind of. Okay, I lied. But it makes for a fun game. Napoleon in Egypt is a Tower Defense style game in which one player takes on the role of Napoleon and must loot all the treasure he can from Egypt before the Mummies (the other three players) overtake him. Packing 36 custom dice, Napoleon in Egypt is an impressive game with a bit of assembly time.
As a lane based Tower Defense game, each player is given their own lanes to look over. The Red Mummy Lord may only move within the Red Lanes, etc. So each round begins with the Mummies as they roll their dice, with three rolls to keep whatever they want. Then, using the arrows on dice, they can move their mummies up the lanes. Finally, they spawn new mummies according to dice results.
Napoleon then has his choices when rolling his dice. Only certain units can defeat the different mummy types so he'll want different unit types in different lanes and of course Gunpowder to supply them but there is also the matter of Looters. If he rolls 3 looters, he'll gain a treasure artifact which is a big boost in points but the longer he ignores the Mummies, the quicker they overthrow his defenses, forcing his retreat.
Once Napoleon enters retreat, the next player takes on the roll of Napoleon. Each player tries to gain the most number of points across their turns as Mummies and Napoleon.
There is a part of me that's tired of waiting for the Plants vs Zombies board game, another part of me that wanted to use all but 5 of the dice stickers on The Game Crafters custom dice sticker sheet, and the other part that wanted to enter the Game Crafters Cooperative Game Design Contest (in which I made finalist, btw). And so Napoleon in Egypt was born.
From there, it was a large amount of just play test, play test, play test until all the units were refined to the point where the game flowed the way I wanted it to. Believe it or not, one of the current issues with the game is analysis paralysis. I seem to have made the game a bit too strategic. But when it that a bad thing? Oh wait, Light Hive.
The History of Napoleon in Egypt
