Cesta Životem
Digital board game | Bachelor thesis | Unity – C#
The practical part of my Bachelor's degree at VŠPJ: a complete digital version of the Czech board game Cesta Životem by Fox Games, built in Unity and C#. Adapting a board game is a rules problem before it is a programming one — every convention that players around a table settle by common sense has to become an explicit system the computer can enforce, with no room left for interpretation. The finished game is hot-seat for up to eight players on a single machine, adds a computer-controlled player, and ships with its own 3D models, sound effects, menus and settings.
Learning goal
Cesta Životem is a financial-literacy board game. Digitising it meant schools could keep using it during distance teaching, where the physical board is not an option.
My role
- Formalised the original board game's rules into an explicit, unambiguous rule system, with the stated goal of keeping the original game authentic.
- Implemented a computer-controlled player, so the game does not need a full table to be playable.
- Built the whole game loop: turn order, dice rolls, movement on the board, the round limit and the per-turn timer.
- Made the supporting content myself — 3D models, sound effects, menus, an in-game tutorial and graphics/resolution settings.
- Wrote the whole thing solo as the practical half of the thesis, alongside a written analysis of the Unity engine.
Systems I designed
- Each player controls two figures, tracked completely separately — every figure has its own money and its own education level.
- An education ladder built into the board — ZŠ, SŠ and VŠ squares — that a figure climbs by choosing to study instead of earning.
- Two parallel career tracks, employment and business, scored independently and resolved at the end as best employee and best entrepreneur.
- A shop economy split into a classic shop and a VIP shop, with separate price lists, backed by card piles for events.
- A session bounded by a 30-round limit and a per-turn timer, so a game fits inside a school lesson.
- A five-part tutorial covering starting positions, the board and the turn actions, so a class can start without reading the rulebook.
Core mechanics
- Roll the dice, move your figure around the board, then decide whether to go to work or go back to study.
- Studying costs you a turn of income now in exchange for a better position later — the core trade-off the whole game is built on.
- Money is tracked in Kč per figure and spent in the shops, which is where a good career actually shows.
- Event squares and drawn cards interrupt the plan, so an optimal route through the board is never the whole answer.
Source code
Gallery
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