With it being Mother’s Day, I was curious what games unexpectedly clicked with your mom or family.
Could be anything from party games to heavier strategy stuff. I mean just whatever type of games your mom tends to enjoy playing with you or other people?
My mom, is not a big gamer, but I can usually get her to play some lighter funnier games like Exploding kittens.
What work with your mom?
Now cards are not the sole play here with our game, but they are a key part. The game plays like Axis and Allies meets Slay the Spire for context. So a lot of focus is on cards as they can interact with all the systems in the game, even dice rolls.
We’ve been refining the card layout and visual language for our near-future strategy game and hit an interesting balancing act between readability and atmosphere.
The first image shows finalized game play cards with: conditional effects, persistent effects, icon-driven damage types, combo categorization for quick parsing and battlefield state interactions
The second image is some of the raw art direction spread without UI layered on top. We are also adding some key elements showcase real life locations, we liked how it's subtle.
One of the biggest challenges has been. keeping the cards visually aggressive and thematic while still making them readable at a glance during play. you start the game with 4 cards, but you can upgrade your hand to hold more cards. These cards also interact with the types of units actually in the battle. So brevity is key.
A lot of the UI decisions came from repeated play testing: reducing text density (this took forever and is still ongoing, even the picture examples have changes already), moving repeated concepts into icons, creating stronger card-type identity, keeping effect hierarchy readable during combat. later in the game you can have about 6-8 cards in your hand, and if you spec heavily into cards this can get upwards of 10. You may ahve multiple battles to fight before getting a fresh set of cards so having more is useful but we also need to realize anything above 8 start to get unwieldy, so we made sure this was an opt in system.
Curious what people here think:
Now cards are not the sole play here with our game, but they are a key part. The game plays like Axis and Allies meets Slay the Spire for context. So a lot of focus is on cards as they can interact with all the systems in the game, even dice rolls.
We’ve been refining the card layout and visual language for our near-future strategy game and hit an interesting balancing act between readability and atmosphere.
The first image shows finalized gameplay cards with: conditional effects, persistent effects, icon-driven damage types, combo categorization for quick parsing and battlefield state interactions
The second image is some of the raw art direction spread without UI layered on top. We are also adding some key elements showcase real life locations, we liked how it's subtle.
One of the biggest challenges has been. keeping the cards visually aggressive and thematic while still making them readable at a glance during play. you start the game with 4 cards, but you can upgrade your hand to hold more cards. These cards also interact with the types of units actually in the battle. So brevity is key.
A lot of the UI decisions came from repeated playtesting: reducing text density (this took forever and is still ongoing, even the picture examples have changes already), moving repeated concepts into icons, creating stronger card-type identity, keeping effect hierarchy readable during combat. later in the game you can have about 6-8 cards in your hand, and if you spec heavily into cards this can get upwards of 10. You may ahve multiple battles to fight before getting a fresh set of cards so having more is useful but we also need to realize anything above 8 start to get unwieldy, so we made sure this was an opt in system.
Curious what people here think:
I was playing Nemesis recently and realized it actually had a soundtrack. Found it trying to search for better explanation of rules. Tried it out and realized how much the soundtrack / ambient audio added to the tension at the table. It honestly changed the feel of the game more than I expected.
Usually we just play random music while playing, but it was kinda cool listening to ambient music that fit the theme. We have played a few time with no music and i honestly feel more tired after long plays like that.
So did I just discovering something that's common knowledge (soundtracks for board games) or is this something that generally fly's under the radar? Do you guys typically do these sound tracks? have background music or just total silence like maniacs?
Looking for our group’s next game and wanted some recommendations.
We’ve played a pretty wide range like Catan, Ticket to Ride, Root, up through heavier stuff like Eclipse and Nemesis.
Some of the group is into RPGs, and I’d like to bring something to the table that leans more in that direction, but I don’t have a ton of experience with RPG-style games myself (I usually stick to strategy).
I’ve heard HeroQuest might be a good entry point, but curious what else you’d recommend?
Ideally something:
Easy to get into (no massive rules overhead)
Still has meaningful decisions
Works well for a group transitioning from strategy games
I’ll obviously bring up the conversation with the group but wanted a few strong options going into that convo.
We started play testing as soon as we could. Not just to play the game but to get our minds in the right place. There is real value to seeing and touching something you made.
Attached is our current game board, but I also added our iterations, not all of them because well i respect your time haha (we have about 23 iterations on TTS). The very last one is what we started with. Luckily i have a rudimentary skill set for Photoshop. But graphic designers and Artist really help bring everything to life.
The latest edit was making Mexico darker, as we have 1 card that must be played in a coastal state, and I played it in Arizona.... and my partner didn't even blink. Now that says a lot about us and geography, but it also says "maybe we need some contrast here" as Mexico kinda just blended with the ocean. I'll also state that no we are not interested in any ocean front property in AZ.
This game board is near finished. Would love to hear any last minute feedback before we lock this for our review copies.
Anecdotally, I'm curious how everyone here determines their art style? We brainstormed, created a mood board, then took one of our cards and created a few different versions in a few styles before locking in a specific style. We then used that as the template for all work that followed. Has that been everyone else path or do you do something a bit different?
We started play testing as soon as we could. Not just to play the game but to get our minds in the right place. There is real value to seeing and touching something you made.
Attached is our current game board, but I also added our iterations, not all of them because well i respect your time haha (we have about 23 iterations on TTS). The very last one is what we started with. Luckily i have a rudimentary skill set for Photoshop. But graphic designers and Artist really help bring everything to life.
The latest edit was making Mexico darker, as we have 1 card that must be played in a coastal state, and I played it in Arizona.... and my partner didn't even blink. Now that says a lot about us and geography, but it also says "maybe we need some contrast here" as Mexico kinda just blended with the ocean. I'll also state that no we are not interested in any ocean front property in AZ.
This game board is near finished. Would love to hear any last minute feedback before we lock this for our review copies.
Anecdotally, I'm curious how everyone here determines their art style? We brainstormed, created a mood board, then took one of our cards and created a few different versions in a few styles before locking in a specific style. We then used that as the template for all work that followed. Has that been everyone else path or do you do something a bit different?