Capstone Project - Furniture Cards : Bedroom [PART 1]
Mood boards -
The furniture cards within my game will be how the players level up their cave's attributes. They are crafted using energy and materials and each item of furniture awards a different boost [or negative] to certain stats. Visually, the furniture should be exaggerated but still recognisable, combining both modern and prehistoric visual elements together. I am taking a lot of inspiration from the flintstones and how they make prehistoric materials feel more modern. I also like their usage of living creates in place of furniture, for example the baby mammoth vacuum cleaner and the dinosaur lawn mower.
In my mood boards I have included examples of both real historical furniture pieces, modern furniture in the "Caveman style" and some other assorted concept art that had interesting shapes to them. Colour wise, I am aiming to stick to quite a natural colour pallet [browns, greys, beiges] with occasional pops of desaturated colour. Much like the Cavepeople I have been drawing, I will use pelts as a way to add patterns to my designs and keep within the theming of my game.
Although I haven't tested if this will work yet, I think making 12 furniture cards would be enough for the game to work. That divides it so that all 4 players could have at least 3 cards each. With this in mind, I think I should keep the layouts of the cards quite minimal [with the furniture item being placed just on a simple background] so that I have enough time to draw each of them. If this becomes too much, I will reduce the number down to 8 cards.
Of these cards I would like:
1 set [4 cards] of lounge furniture : Chairs, televisions, Potted plants, Side tables
1 set [4 cards] of Bedroom furniture: Beds, bookshelves, vanities, Rugs
1 set [4 cards] of miscellaneous furniture: Paintings/general décor, Heaters/fireplaces, Security alarms, Swimming pool?
Thumbnails -
Using my mood board as reference, I created some thumbnails of different kinds of furniture. Although a lot of these lean more into modern theming than prehistoric, the natural materials and asymmetrical appearance give them a more primitive look.
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| Beds |
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| Chairs |
Inspired by the Flintstones, I also tried to incorporate living creatures into the designs, especially seen in the Parasaurolophus couch and the cushions that are fluffy creatures curled up into a ball. I really like this Idea and I think used sparingly it could be a amusing addition to the furniture line up.
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| Chairs and Beds |
Feedback -
Gathering some feedback most people really liked the Geode bed and the leaf bed, I think in terms of practicality, the leaf bed made more sense, but the Geode bed was more unique which made it the more popular choice. While sleeping on something so pointy would likely not be very comfortable, I could reflect this with the stat modifiers of the bed leaning more on advantage to trendiness with a disadvantage to Comfort.
Bedroom cards -
I struggle drawing hard surface assets without making them look blocky and awkward, so to help give me a better foundation that feels less stiff I made some very quick models in Maya to draw on top of. I had some ideas on how to lay out the furniture cards [making each set be able to line up together to make one big scene] so having them all be separate objects that I can move around at different angles this will make drawing the big scene much quicker whilst keeping the perspective accurate.
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| Beds |
This is how the beds look like drawn on top of, This more polished set of thumbnails let me compare each of the beds in a better way and let me see which design stood out best. I still agree that the Geode bed looks the most visually interesting and unique, However I did go back and edit this drawing a bit as I wasn't very happy with how I actually drew the rock texture.
I ended up outlining the rocks in a lighter grey which made it feel more rock-like, I also added more dimension to the geode inside to increase the look of depth whilst also making the line separating rock from crystals a bit thicker to also help with the overall depth of the bed. I am much happier with this now and will employ the same technique should I need to redraw the bed in the final scene.
During my prototyping phase, I made a few more thumbnails for potential furniture items, of these I really like the Woofer rug and the shinystone. I decided to make some iterations on the shinystone within maya [the shinystone being a vanity made of a log, a shiny stone and some pots and vases containing makeup and such]. This in turn helps showcase [in an exaggerated manner] how cavemen did like to accessorize themselves with jewellery and body art.
I made an iteration on this design with a stool like stone, two mirrors and a more chair like design, Of these I think I personally like design 2 and 4 as they read best as being vanities, however I think adding more details with my 2D draw over would help them feel even more like a vanity whilst adding more overall visual interest to my design.
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| Vanity |
Here are my draw overs, again I tried to stick to the balance of primitive and modern themes. I really liked design number 2 and design number 4, with the mirror of 2 and the trailing plant of number 4, which I thought gave it a more homely feel. Combining these two designs I made two more designs exploring different patterns on the rug, I think the mammoth fur rug of the bottom design is less busy than the top design, having a nice balance between detail and block colour.
Layouts -
Before moving onto my final designs, I wanted to consider what kind of cards I would actually be putting my designs onto. I thought of two options:
- Keep the furniture cards on the same size as the rest of the cards in the game
- Consider hexagonal tiles, which tessellate well to take up less space on the board.
Doing some research into unique card layouts, I identified three games that all have unique approaches to showing furniture within their game pieces. The first game I looked into was KÖ-ØP (offcut games 2022), A flat-pack furniture manual inspired game which uses hexagonal tiles to represent certain actions within the game. As you can see in the image below, this allows you to arrange the cards in a space efficient and neat manner. I also thought that the hexagonal tiles would fit well with the theming of my game, allowing me to customize the artwork on them to look like stones. There are of course both pros and cons with choosing a hexagonal tile, being:
Pros:
- space efficient
- Visually unique
- differentiates them from the other cards within the game, improving accessibility to the game
Cons:
- Reduced space for artwork and icons
- More expensive to print than printing cards of all the same type.
The next game I looked at was a game called Décorum (Floodgate games 2022), which revolves around the premise of decorating a house. This is an expanded version of what I hope to convey in the mechanics of Hotel Bunga, as such, the pieces within this game are all unique in their shape. This is a really nice touch and looks great especially in relation to the house decorating nature of the game. If I were to do something like this for Hotel Bunga, I would have to draw the Cave cards having a cross section of the interior space to decorate with these tiles. While this is a really nice and unique idea, this would mean I would have to make a lot more furniture items to make the game fair for all the players, Considering the time I have for this project, I don't think that would be possible. Here are the pros and cons for completely unique card pieces:
Pros:
- Very unique to the game
- Improves the interactivity of the decorating mechanic
- Looks impressive
Cons:
- Much much more money to produce, even more so than the hex tiles
- Increases overall production time of this project, with it requiring me to rewrite the decorating and resource management element of my game
- Very small area for art, more suited to very simplistic art styles without the need for icons
The final game I looked into was Dream Home (Rebel Sp. z o.o. 2016) which follows a similar premise to Décorum (Floodgate games 2022) in the sense that the main gameplay revolves around decorating a house. I really like how the cards in this game when placed next to each other build up a scene, and I think this is something I would like to try in my own game [especially since I've been struggling so much with how I want to lay out the cards]. Dream Home (Rebel Sp. z o.o. 2016) also uses slightly smaller and thinner cards than a regular deck, reducing the size they take up on the board. I think this sits in a nice middle ground of the space efficiency of the hex tiles, and the aesthetic quality of the custom tile pieces. I may also consider reworking my employee and client cards to remove the boarder, giving more space on the card overall and giving them a cleaner look. Here are the pros and cons for a smaller card deck or simply sticking to the same size cards as the rest of the game.
Pros:
- Easier to produce.
- Cheaper to produce
- Less waste from excess card or wood from cutting out unique pieces
Cons:
- Less unique look
- Risks taking up a lot of space on the board in comparison to my other options.
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| KÖ-ØP (offcut games 2022), Décorum (Floodgate games 2022), Dream Home (Rebel Sp. z o.o. 2016) |
Actually looking into how much it would cost to print cards compared to Hex tiles, I researched online what companies offer the best prices for hexagonal tiles. A comment on Reddit's board game forum recommended the manufacturer Board games maker, as well as this there is Hayman creative who are a Nottingham based company. I compared the two company's prices to produce the cards . I think looking at these two companies, Board games maker does seem a little cheaper but I am not sure how much help they give you in case you format something wrong, which I have heard Hayman creative does help you with so that you don't mess up your entire order.
Looking at the price of cards compared to hex tiles, they're about the same, so I will do some thumbnails to see what would be most efficient for my game's cards.
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| Board Games maker card price |
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| Board Games maker Hex tiles price |
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| Hayman creative card price |
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| Hayman creative Hex tiles price |
I made 3 designs for how the cards would be laid out, there are 3 vital pieces of information that should be on these cards that being the attribute modifiers, price of the object and the recipe needed to make the furniture piece. With this in mind, I think design number 3 utilizes the space best whilst also taking up less vertical space compared to the portrait layout of design number 1.
Feedback 2-
I asked my peers for their feedback on what design was easiest to read and they agreed that design number 3 was the best layout in terms of readability and use of space.
Final Designs Part 1-
Using the Employee card as a base I used the design elements to create the front of the furniture card according to my sketches above. I thought adding the cave background would help tie it into the game but in all truth I don't really like how it looks. I think it looks a bit cramped still and the bed just floating in this cave painting void feels just really unfinished.
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| I don't really like how it looks :( |
I thought maybe changing the background would help, I made it a cooler colour pallet similar the client cards but I think this made the bed difficult to see.
I then tried out placing the title of the object towards the bottom of the card to give more space for the artwork, however i'm still not fully happy with the design so I think I will go back to the drawing board and look into how I can improve this layout.
Bibliography -
Anon, n.d. Create Your Own Board Game (Online). Board Games maker. Available at: https://www.boardgamesmaker.com/ [Accessed 27 January 2026].
Floodgate Games, 2022. Décorum(Online). Boardgamegeek. Available at: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/344554/decorum [Accessed 27 January 2026].
offcut games, 2022. KÖ-ØP (Online). Boardgamegeek. Available at: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/349091/ko-op [Accessed 27 January 2026].
Rebel Sp. z o.o, 2016. Dream Home(Online). Boardgamegeek. Available at: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/194880/dream-home [Accessed 27 January 2026].
Generalian(Pseud.), 2021. Working on a card game that uses hexagons for cards. Any companies you suggest that could print something like this? Need precise measurements - Reddit [online]. Available at: https://www.reddit.com/r/tabletopgamedesign/comments/syx3bp/working_on_a_card_game_that_uses_hexagons_for/ [Accessed 27 January 2026].
Trello -
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