Capstone Project - Player cards

 Printing considerations -

https://www.printpond.co.uk/product/document-printing/promo/laminate/?gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=15639753016&gbraid=0AAAAAC9YCBM4NGuv3ftZm6MBaXVMPkpgL&gclid=Cj0KCQjwqPLOBhCiARIsAKRMPZrSSNY3kOOSPP3RYSvTUcoKgi3Nc-G2UehU6DQ6OnQ38Haf7A0t6S8aAp0QEALw_wcB

For the player cards I decided it would be much easier to have them be dry erase than have loads of counters that only have one use [i am still keeping the resource, money and energy tokens as having these physical counters not only makes the game visually more interesting but also will make it easier for children to play]. Although I said I wanted minimal amount of plastic in my game, I think this will have to be an exception as laminating card is the only way I could find to make cards that are suitable for dry erase. Luckily it is only 4 assets within my game that need this, so overall it keeps the amount of plastic needed to a minimum.

Hayman creative does not offer a5 sized cards so I had to have a look around at printing and lamination services online that could produce these assets, this isn't practical for multiple copies of my game as it relies on me to assemble the product myself, but just for one copy this is fine. I found a company called Print Pond who seem pretty good and offer reasonable prices for printing services. I would need 4 250gsm a5 sheets, double sided, colour printed and laminated for may game, which was estimated at around £2.00 something not including shipping. This is a really good price [I'm looking at £4 total which I'm totally happy to pay for something like this].

With this in mind, I will need to create a a5 document file in Scribus to use as a template for my player cards.

Cave mood board -

In the background of the player cards I would like to include a drawing of the cave relating to each of the four climates. Above are some images of cave like buildings that I thought were very interesting, I love how most of them have a very exaggerated silhouette but all look like they could feasibly exist. This is what I would like to emulate in my own work.

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/oRwAw

I really like the process this artist uses of making really quick concept thumbnails from rough shapes then developing them further. I think doing something like this will make choosing the final cave designs much quicker and also will allow me to compare the silhouettes to one another.

Thumbnails [Layout]-

For the layouts I considered what the most important elements of the player boards would be, that being the cave attributes, day counter, and the client space. I also wanted to include some artwork on the cards just to add context to what the cave attributes and furniture are for.

Something i noticed when i was playtesting my game is that people drew on the little mockup player sheets that i made to mark down their cave attributes. This was mostly due to the fact i didn't have any tokens with me but it got me thinking perhaps making the player boards dry-erase would be better than using so many tokens [there will still be tokens for flora, fauna, energy and money]. As mentioned above i intend to laminate these sheets so people can use whiteboard markers on them, this does mean my game will have to include some plastic elements but i actually think this would made the game more eco-friendly as I would not need to have as many tokens produced.

Feedback -

Of these designs I agreed most that number 6 was the clearest to read. I hadn't considered the Z pattern idea, which design 6 follows most closely, I agree this makes it much nicer to look at.

Cave thumbnails -

Originally I was going to have the cave attributes have this stone like texture all over them, however i thought that this would make the whiteboard pen harder to see.

Instead, I went for this plain white design but still kept the same rock like shape to them. The day counter will also require the use of whiteboard pen, so i also kept these blank. I did think that they looked a bit plain though, so I asked my peers some feedback on how to improve.

One of my peers suggested drawing each day as a different gemstone, I love this idea, it fits so well with the theme of the game and adds an extra bit of interest to the icons without compromising the readability and whiteboard function.

Here is the final mock-up of the player board, I intend to put a drawing of each cave in the section that is currently greyed out, and the client card is only there to show the function of the cutaway.

Final layouts -

Each player board is themed around a different biome, here are the mock ups of each biome.

Sketch for the frosts

Sketch for the dunes

Cave thumbnails -

And here are some thumbnails for what the actual caves will look like. I tried to pick out shapes present in the reference images I provided for each biome on the side, combining them with or turning them into building like shapes.

Of these designs I think I will go with:

The dunes - Shell Chalet

The Canopy - Mountain range guest cave

The Frosts - Frosty grotto

The Plateau - Hairy hut [however i did really like the play on words with Bunga-low]

Trello -

https://trello.com/invite/b/69306718fdd0476153961582/ATTI61cd14c47a800c2abb0380e613a9fc5e3ABE0DE4/capstone

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/112wXJW27lFJjkPjQHZk7fCMT7VPCanDHE-cVP0tGDUM/edit?usp=sharing

Now that I have these completed, I'm really close to being completely finished with the proposed assets for this project. I just need to finalize the player boards with the cave artwork then I will be done. I intend to get this completed by next week, and hopefully move onto making the game manual in the same week too. My final stretch goal would be to put together some box art, this would entail me having to look into box printing and find a good template, I do think that if I can get the player boards and the manual done by next week this would not be entirely out of the question. Depending on how much this adds onto the manufacturing price I might not end up printing a box but I will certainly look into it.