Escape from Tag World Devlog 5: Logo & Box Art

This time I spent a lot of time working on the next major piece: the box. I went through over 50 logo iterations and multiple tries at the box design itself. It was a long and painful process, but I finally got there! All in all, it took over 10 hours to create the logo and box art as I tried to get past the finish line here.

The first part of working on the box art meant figuring out the logo. I wasn't really happy with how my logo came out in the last post, so I wanted to kind of start over and just do some sketches without trying to find the perfect font. This would help me experiment and be more loose. So I made a few rough sketches for different layouts. I ended up liking some of the rough ones, sometimes with bolder darks. And I still like the idea of incorporating either some kind of tree-like elements or wing/bird features to fit into the Tag World theme. So 2, 3, and 15 felt like the best direction for these below.

Then I got some feedback about including more of the tree leaves and limbs of the tree in it. So I took that and started to add some tree-like features around it like twigs and leaves. Some of these were looking closer, but maybe weren't quite the mood of the game and how Tag World is a bit more friendly.

So after more feedback, I realized I was maybe making them a little too "scary" feeling because of the tree-like shapes. So I tried to do a lot more round and "friendly" designs. I wasn't really happy with the direction or how these were coming out though.

I was getting really stuck at this point, so I just went back to just typed versions to see if that would help. I still wasn't really getting anywhere with these though.

So at that point, I had to take a break because I was hitting a wall again. So I brought back the box art sketch I did previously to try and come up with some designs centered around that sketch to see if I could integrate it a little bit more. I was kind of liking some elements like putting them on the path behind Pidgebeetle (the bird at the top) and the wing-like elements I added. So this helped a little bit. I'm still not quite there, but it's making me think about the design as a whole more.

I kind of liked the integration of the circular shape, so I worked on a few more that would be more stylized and neater. I didn't really like the messy and slanted feeling, so I went with some designs that tried to make it feel a bit more neat and organized.

I tried to tie them back in a little more but keep that wing-like element just on the T and the W more so it could be more focused. I was also trying to get the flow from the original ones while cleaning it up more and making it feel more customized.

So then I combined some of the elements together and made a more finished version using the pen tool and shapes. I'm not sure about the colors still, but it's getting there!

Then I started to flesh out the box design with the original idea with the linkship flying away. It kind of made the logo feel a bit supplementary and the linkship was maybe a bit too prominent though. So I ended up scrapping this idea, regardless of how many hours I put into it.

I decided to make the logo more central to the design and redid some of the background elements. I even decided to scrap the linkship part entirely because it wasn't really coming out how I wanted it to, since I'm just not really a background artist. I made Shelter 128 and the tree in the back a bit more prominent and mostly just kept Pidgebeetle. I tried out a more orange/yellow look instead of the green and yellow to make it stand out from the tree background as well.

Everything was still kind of blending in together too much with it all being 1 color. So I tried to add some blues and greens back in, but just on the tail part. I also got rid of the stroke so it would look more like a background element and make the text pop more.

I decided to make use of the linkship that I spent time drawing on the bottom of the box. Since the bottom of the box is rarely seen anyway, I wasn't too worried about it being prominent on there quite as much. I did a few iterations though and ended up with one that had a Link Between Worlds background.

Because I finished the logo, I also came back to the card backs. One of these is for the cards that cost Birdians and the other is for the Linkship Pilots that cost Points. I went through a few iterations on this one as well.

I started with the original background I had, but the colors weren't quite working and neither were the textures. So I tried integrating the leaves into the center and adding a wood texture around the outside.

I wasn't really sure on the green colored one, so I also tried a design where I added leaves from the score board to make it more obvious what the texture was meant to represent.

Then I came back to the cover and made a few sketches to rethink the background elements. I still really wanted Shelter 128 to be in it because of how central that is to Tag World, so it's in both of these sketches to some degree.

I wasn't really sure if it fully represented the setting of Tag World, so I revisited my previous design and played around with adding more depth. I changed the size of some of the elements and added more little details to help it feel less empty.

I came back to the card backs and started over. I looked at some inspiration from board games I have to see how they structured those. I was realizing a lot of them didn't actually have the name of the game/the logo on them, and that was a big inspiration for how I decided to take these next.

I tried a few ideas like adding leaves or textures in, but keeping the name of the deck instead. For the non-Linkship Pilot deck, I wasn't sure if I wanted it to be Shelter or Crew Member at first.

Then I simplified more. Basic colors and gradients. I'm not sure if it looks too plain though. I started with just the Linkship Pilot deck and figured I would transfer it over to the other deck after figuring out the design.

Then I went back to my inspirations and wanted to really add something that would make this unique instead of just a solid color. So I added a box and the Linkship Pilot symbol to make it more clear which deck this was, and to customize it a little more. I liked how this came out, so I also translated it over to the Crew Members. I also added the Group symbols to make that one more unique as well.

And with that, I officially sent it off for the first printing! By my next post, I'll have my first printed version so I can make any tweaks or print the final version.

Escape from Tag World Devlog 4: Additional Game Pieces

With the final card design finalized, I started to figure out some of the extra pieces outside of the cards.

I did some sketches for the box art, trying to figure out the logo that way so it could integrate with that main design. I really liked the idea of the Linkship Pilots being central to the design and showcasing some aspects of Tag World, but that does mean drawing the Linkship, which I'm not super thrilled about.

I took the one I liked most of the sketchbook thumbnails and started to lay it out in Photoshop, using one of the box templates on TheGameCrafter to figure out what size it needed to be. I'm a bit nervous about making the Linkship so prominent in the design, but I'll probably look into some ways to try and get the perspective right for the final design.

Before drawing the box art, I wanted to really finalize the logo so I could integrate the design around it. I started with various typography tests using different fonts and arrangements of text. I started in black and white before going into the coloring of it to figure out the layout. I wanted to make the T and the W stand out more. I played around with making the T more tree-like in some of these.

And then I started to add color! I'm still trying to feel out the overall direction here. The colors are still fairly rough. I'm also not 100% on this layout and design, but I'm getting somewhere maybe. I'll probably end up reworking it by the next blog post.

Then I put together some backs for the cards using this design. I'm going to have a green back for the cards that cost Birdians and then orange/yellow backs for the Linkship Pilots. Once I finish the logo I'll update that on here as well. 

Then I was thinking about different parts like pieces that could help you keep track of your Birdians or Points in a turn better. This would be for each turn, so you could view your current of each to better strategize. So I started concepting what those might look like. At first, I wasn't sure if I was going to use tiles, a board, or something else. But I wanted to get some ideas concepted out at least to have options. So I started by coming up with some tokens with the basic symbols on them with numbers. I ended up using a variation of these later on, but not this exact design, since these were still the rough Birdian and Point shapes before I finalized them.

I also was thinking about how sometimes I want to track if an ability has already been used or if a card has counted towards deploying a Linkship Pilot. So I made some tile concepts that could help track that. I didn't place the final symbols on here, but I was playing around with some textures and ideas to show that. I'm probably going to end up scrapping this idea and just going with flipping the card though, since I don't think they're super necessary.

There are a few actions that happen each turn, up until turn 5, so I was thinking about some kind of dial to use to keep track of which turn you're on. I don't really like this design, but the idea was to have it be tree-like so the top is the leaves and the bottom is the wood. I was mostly playing around with some textures to see what works. I don't think I'll even end up using this because I was realizing this started to add too many pieces to the game. So this was just a test while thinking about extra pieces that could be helpful.

Then I started to think about the 3D game pieces. I'm leaning more towards creating a board that you can use for scoring rather than tokens, because I feel that'd be easier to count up as you're actively keeping score. So I 3D modeled a Linkship in Blender and then took it into Flashprint for 3D printing. It only took me about an hour to get it through to that process, but then my 3D printer was having some clogged filament issues, so that slowed me down and took up more of my time than I wanted it to.

Luckily Jinny was able to help me get my 3D printer back up and running so I was able to start doing prints! I started with one that was a bit smaller than I wanted. So then I printed it again at a bigger size and I think it turned out pretty much the exact size I was going for! I also tested out painting the first one with paint markers but I kind of prefer just the regular green filament one.

So then I looked at the size and how they'd fit on a board. I used Wrong Party's board as a reference and I really liked how they felt.

From there, I created my own score board. I wanted it to have a tree-like feeling like the rest of the elements of Tag World. So I started with just some leaves on a brown background, but then Jinny gave me some feedback and I was able to update it to integrate a lot better! With this design, I was going to use 2 boards actually that you put together to create 1 larger one so it would fit in the box I'm planning to use.

When I went to upload the board design to TGC, it unfortunately changed my game to need a bigger box size. So I had to search for other pieces that would actually fit and uploaded test art to ensure it wouldn't change on me mid-development again after uploading. I didn't want to change the box size because I'm trying really hard to make this game very small in size and not have a lot of components needed. The goal was to keep this one very simple compared to Nay Saga, in terms of addition pieces. So I had to go back to the drawing board and redo the placement of everything for this board due to the difference in size. It turned out maybe looking better in the end and more focused, so it was probably a good change in the end.

Then I made some minor updates to cards. But I finally finished the cards and printed all of them out on paper! I wanted to make sure they were all 100% good to go before the final TGC prints, so I went through and did some proofreading on the cards and ensured they were good to go. I also did some final playtesting.

Then I started to work on some of the other elements. First, I wanted to differentiate the Linkship Pilot symbol from the Point symbol so it'd be more clear in the ability descriptions on some of the cards. So I redesigned it to look more like a pilot symbol, but still include the start to make that clear of which card it was associated with.

Then I made a few extra cards, since I had some thoughts after doing my real final playtest with the paper cards. I wanted a way to keep track of which groups you have in the deck, because that could make it easier to work towards certain Linkship Pilots. I tried out tracking them on a dry erase board and liked how that felt, so I decided to design a card to track that.

Also while I've been doing my playtests, I've kept a written piece of paper with some of the simple rules I wanted to remember. So I made a simple quick rules card, which may end up just being the back of the group tracking card above. It just has the simple rules. I didn't spend a lot of time on the design, mainly just because it's meant to be a quick reference point.

  

Then I updated the score board. I'm thinking 1 side will be if you're playing the full version with Linkship Pilots up to 70 cost (which is the previous board I had), but then if they're only playing up to 50 cost, players can use this board. This board separates the Birdian and Point spaces out so it's easier to have both on the same spaces at the same time. I changed the colors also to be more fall-colored leaves for the Points, and keeping the green leaves for the Birdians. This might also allow me to use the green 3D printed pieces for one of them so it stands out more.

All that's left really is the final logo and box art, then the instruction booklet. And at that point it'll be ready for the final print. So in the next post, I'll be ready to wrap up all of the final assets!