Dumpster Diving

Overview

Dumpster Diving: A Cooperative Board Game

Dumpster Diving is a 2-4 player cooperative board game where a team of raccoons work together to scavenge loot from dumpsters before a trash company seals them all off. Games run about 20-30 minutes. The game components include:

1. 1 Raccoon character cards
2. 4 Raccoon and trash truck game pieces
3. 2 Loot card deck
4. 5 Game board
5. 3 Seal point tokens
6. 6 Game manual

Designed and produced over the course of one week as part of a game design course at UCLA.

Concept

The idea behind the game

The game started with a clear premise, with a crew of raccoons cooperatively scavenging a neighborhood while a trash company worked against them. From there, brainstorming established the raccoon ability archetypes, a card-driven point system, and a shrinking map through sealed dumpsters. The three-stage escalation system doubled as the game's timer, with each stage introducing a new layer of pressure: fewer loot cards, then permanent dumpster sealing, then increased trash truck movement restricting player options in the final stretch. The raccoons are always racing to hit their point target before the trash company shuts the neighborhood down completely.

Design Direction

Building the visual language

For the art style, I went with something simple and cartoon-like to match the lighthearted concept, but kept it soft and slightly endearing rather than purely comedic. The raccoons needed to feel like gremlins you root for, scrappy and a little chaotic, which fit naturally with the hoarding and scavenging theme.

Game illustrations

Playtesting

What playtesting changed

Playtesting revealed two key adjustments. The original dumpster layout was a single square where players could flip all loot cards without moving, which made the game too fast and removed meaningful decision-making. By expanding dumpsters into movement grids, the game forced players to be more deliberate about where they spent their movement points. The second change was introducing a physical trash truck game piece as a visual indicator of the game system working against the players, making the threat feel more tangible on the board.

Finished Game

All the pieces, together

Photos of the completed game where the board, cards, tokens, and raccoon pieces, all come together are below.

Game Manual

Read the full rulebook

The full game manual is available to read below.

Reflection

Notes & Takeaways

This was my first time designing a tabletop game from the ground up, and it introduced me to a whole set of design considerations I hadn't worked with before.