The great ballad of Valdeninteractive narrative
2022






Carried out at Politecnico di Milano
Supervised by Ilaria Mariani PhD, Mariana Ciancia PhD, Walter Mattana PhD, Leonardo Codamo

In collaboration with—Kseniia Havrylova, Federico Corbani, Marco DeMarchi and 
Anastasiia Zaiarniuk

Display font—Peste by Morganne Borowczyk
The Great Ballad of Valden is a hybrid board game set in a fictional medieval storyworld. The narrative follows four heroes who fight their way through various challenges to achieve a common goal. They strive to end the oppressive reign of the crocodile king to restore balance and freedom in their communities. 

Players are transported to a mystical realm, where they take on the role of one of the heroes to complete quests, defeat powerful enemies, and uncover ancient mysteries to gain ultimate victory while working together. The story is narrated through cutscenes and events online. During turns players move and take actions on boards, defeat enemies, hunt for items and take crucial decisions to return equality to the land of Valden. 

The game is divided between two main components: physical and digital. The physical part relates to the game set which includes a rule book, sets of cards, character cards, enemy cards, action cards, item cards, boards, character pawns, tokens, enemy tokens and dice. These components serve as the primary medium for gameplay. The role of the digital medium is to enhance storytelling, provide context, and offer additional interactive elements. The Great Ballad of Valden app features cutscenes, board rules, event card generator and a scoring system.