Sheherzaade is a competitive storytelling card game where players embody the legendary storyteller from One Thousand and One Nights, crafting tales to impress the Sultan and avoid elimination. Blending improvisation with structured game design, the game challenges players to incorporate randomly drawn story elements like characters, magical artifacts, conflicts, and themes into original narratives under pressure.

Players take on the role of Sheherzaade, crafting captivating stories from randomly drawn cards in a high-stakes competition to entertain the Sultan and survive each round. The game combines improvisational storytelling with structured mechanics, using evolving prompts and reaction-based outcomes to create dynamic, player-driven narratives.

In Sheherzaade, I led the game system design, card structure development, and visual asset creation, building a narratively rich tabletop experience that balances creativity, strategy, and progressive complexity.

Dynamic Storytelling System:
Each round, players draw randomly shuffled story cards and must craft a coherent tale that incorporates all drawn elements from mythical beasts and betrayals to magical spells and shifting loyalties.

Thematic World-Building:
Inspired by One Thousand and One Nights, story cards include motifs like desert tricksters, enchanted relics, forbidden love, and divine punishment, evoking the legendary feel of the source material.

Sultan’s Reaction Cards (Elimination System):
At the end of every round, players draw a Sultan’s Reaction Card that determines whether they’re praised, spared, punished, or instantly eliminated, creating dramatic tension and comedic twists.

Deck Expansion Mechanics:
With each new round, an additional story card is added to the deck, increasing narrative complexity and pushing players to adapt and evolve their tales on the fly.

Replayability & Strategy:
Blends chance and creativity with player-driven pacing, making every game session unpredictable and highly replayable; no two stories unfold the same way.

Sheherzaade merges storytelling, tension, and improvisation into a fast-paced, social card game that rewards quick thinking and narrative wit. The project demonstrates my ability to design analog systems that foster creativity, player expression, and strategic elimination; all within a richly themed experience rooted in cultural narrative traditions.