Temple Raiders

The problem

Design a mini-game event that onboards instantly, creates real tension, and slots into proven live-ops structures without feeling like a reskin.

The pitch

Push your luck. Raid the vault. Get greedy. One decision, every roll: bank it, or push your luck.

• Build a team of Raiders, then spend Maps to trigger the dice popper and move deeper into the temple.
• Collect Gems. Land on a trap and lose a Heart (three per run). Lose all three and the run is over.
• Escape at any time to bank your stash, or push on to the Temple Vault for a bigger payout and a team prize.
• The team with the most gems at the end wins the Grand Prize.

How I got there

• Goal first: a snackable, high-tension event with a full emotional arc in 60–90 seconds.
• Started from the decision, not the theme. The player sets their own risk and session length, and every roll is a real choice: maximum decision density.
• Borrowed proven DNA, added one new tension. Dice, board movement, event currency and team reward structures give instant onboarding; bank-or-push and a three-heart survival gauntlet make it different.
• Prototyped the feel first, because if the core loop doesn’t feel good or unique, nothing else matters.
• Balanced with math, not vibes. Trap density is tuned to a theoretical ~50% vault-reach rate on a full greed run: about 100 tiles, 2d6 movement, three Hearts and about 19 traps, so roughly a 1-in-5 chance of hitting a trap on any roll.

Retention and monetization

• Co-op raids: reaching the Temple Vault gives every team member a choose-your-prize chest, which creates social pull.
• A multi-day event: day 1 is team building, new temples appear every one to two days, and a Grand Temple with higher payouts and more risk arrives on the final day.
• Player value first: Maps are sold when a player can’t afford a roll, and a Heart Rescue offer (IAP, event currency or a rewarded video) appears only when a player is out of hearts with a big stash at stake.

The result

Temple Raiders turns “roll again” into “…should I?” The pitch and a playable Unity prototype came together in under a day. Try the pocket version on my homepage; it’s tuned to the same roughly 50% vault rate.