Upstream

Analog + Digital Game Designer

Welcome to Upstream, a vibrant underwater world where players, as ambitious fish, chase their most whimsical entrepreneurial dreams. But there’s a catch: only one fish gets to open a shop in the bustling market. You must apprentice at 3 shops to master skills collect tokens to launch your business.

Blending expandable board mechanics with digital mini-games, Upstream brings strategy, competition, and surprise into a fast-paced, replayable experience.

Team
4 Game designers

Duration
10 weeks (Apr - Jun 2025)

Project Context

Game Design is challenging!

Designing a game is very different from building an app. Instead of solving a productivity pain point, our goal was to create an experience that kept players coming back. We wanted to build a system where players could:

  1. Feel tension and friendly competition

  2. Make meaningful strategic choices

  3. Be surprised by emergent gameplay

Exploration

Ideation & Early Concepts

We wanted to give players the freedom to build space through play.

We used a diverge → converge brainstorming strategy: first generating ideas individually, then refining them as a group. Storyboards ranged from surreal dreamscapes to mystery co-op games, but we kept circling back to escapism.

At some point, the idea of a fish market came up, sparking jokes about scenarios like buying groceries for your fish wife or attending fish university. That’s when it clicked — what if you’re a fish trying to become a business owner? It was just absurd enough to work.

With a core narrative and basic mechanics, we shifted into rapid prototyping. Each cycle followed the same rhythm: build → test → tweak → retest.

Prototyping & Playtesting

Round 1: Core Mechanics

For our initial prototype, we wanted to test how people interacted with the expanding board mechanic and specifically how (if at all) it affected competition between players. To do so, we created and printed nine grids that players were dealt and instructed to lay down each time that they reached a border.

Before

Playtest: Right away, players resisted expansion. One tester mentioned that they “have no incentive to progress the game,” while another said that they were “taking one for the team so that the game could get moving.” The riddles were solved instantly, and diagonal movement left people confused.

Tweak & Retest: To fix this, we layered in bonuses for expansion, rewrote riddles for more bite, and restricted movement to orthogonal paths. On retest, players explored more of the board and found riddles more engaging. The pace of the game did not change.

After

Prototyping & Playtesting

Round 2: Dynamics

With the mechanics down, we then wanted to focus on incorporating friendly competition into the game. Specifically, we included sabotage, voting, and deduction into the game rules.

Playtest: Players enjoyed sabotage but found the rules unclear. They mentioned that the instructions were too text-heavy, which slowed the energy of the game.

Tweak & Retest: We simplified the rules into visual cards, added clear sabotage icons, and streamlined turn order. On retest, pacing improved and players picked up the mechanic more naturally.

Revised instructions

Printed tiles!

Prototyping & Playtesting

Round 3: Replayability

By this stage, we wanted to understand whether Upstream was fun across multiple playthroughs or if players would lose interest once they learned the mechanics and how to win the digital mini-games. To test this, we had a group of players play the game again after finishing a round.

Special Squares Tutorial

Everyone is locked IN!

Digital mini-game example

Sample special board

Playtest: Several testers felt the game became too predictable and said that “it feels like I know exactly what’s coming next.”

Tweak & Retest: To increase surprise within the game, we decided to incorporate two special tiles: Swap and Magic Mirror. This made the outcome of the game entirely dependent on a player’s strategy.

Prototyping & Playtesting

Round 4: Accessibility

Throughout the playtests, many players noticed that the black block tiles were hard to see on the physical grids. To solve this accessibility issue, we wanted to see if turning the squares white would help.

White block tiles revision

Playtest: Players stated that the white did not intend “block” and felt like they could place their token on the grid.

Tweak & Retest: Instead of keeping the squares white, we decided to keep them black but lighten the colors of the overall grid. In doing so, the black squares became more noticeable.

Overall Thoughts

Game Design is still challenging!

The biggest lesson that I learned through game testing is that there is no one correct way to design. I had always been used to building and then testing, but game design’s build through testing showed me how important it is to gather user feedback every step along the way. Learning about game design has also made me reflect on the ethics of addiction design. Curious about more of my thoughts? Read them here!

Next
Next

Mobile · End-to-End · Needfinding