Buckshot Roulette

Buckshot Roulette is the board game I’m proudest of. It’s a tabletop version of the video game Buckshot Roulette by Mike Klubnika, and it’s the one project where I did everything myself — the game design, the cards and mats, the 3D modeling, and the 3D printing.

The premise

It’s a game of Russian roulette. A toy shotgun is loaded with five shells — some live, some blank — and at the start of each round you roll dice to decide how many of each. They go in in an order nobody knows. The original is a video game; I wanted to take that tension off the screen and onto a table.

How it plays

Players sit in a circle and pass the shotgun around. On your turn you pick a target — another player or yourself — and call whether the chambered shell is live or blank. Shoot a blank at yourself and you get another turn. Gadget cards give you ways to shift the odds (the saw, cuffs, magnifying glass, beer, and cigarettes — each does what its card shows). You earn money by shooting other players for their charges and by knocking them out of the round. Discarding a gadget card costs you money.

No toy shotgun on hand? I also made live and blank shell cards — shuffle them onto the center mat and it plays the same way.

Graphic design

I designed all the cards and mats myself, in the style of the game instead of copying it. The player mat has its own sections — gadgets, money, discard, and a bounty area for charges — laid out to read clearly across the table. The mats are my own design.

3D modeling and printing

The shotgun in the middle of the table is a toy I bought online — it’s the prop the game is built around. The item pieces and trackers that go with it are mine: I modeled them in Maya and resin-printed them myself.

Why it’s here

Buckshot Roulette is the clearest example of how I work. I took a game off a screen and built it into something real you can sit down and play — rules, art, and pieces, start to finish.