Escape from Tag World Devlog 3: Final Card Design

After another break from working on this project (outside of playtesting), I finally came back to try and finalize some of the assets and the card design itself. Development on this project has been a little sporadic, but this time I did make more progress and I'm going in a much better direction!

I finally playtested the game with a real person! Jinny tested with me for about 2 hours and she gave me a lot of really good notes. Based on her notes, I made a couple of quick mock-ups. These were mostly to make the Group symbol larger and more prominent on the card. I got feedback to updating the rewards too, so I made a really rough idea here. I'm looking forward to making more updates to further improve the design!

I tried another take at using the number of symbols to display instead of typing a physical number, but when it gets to the maximum (5) of each, the card gets a little busy. So I decided not to go this route, but it was worth trying to see what it looked like.

Then I went back to trying to move some things around to make the group at the top and the cost at the bottom. It felt a little confusing and I didn't really like where this was going. But the costs in the boxes was a little bit better. The harsh corners on those boxes wasn't really speaking the same language as the other rounded shapes though, so I didn't really like that part though.

 

So I moved everything back to have the cost at the top and the group at the bottom. I decided to move the group icon up so it was still next to the name of the group, but bigger and pops out more so it's more clear of what it's applying to. I also wanted to update the cost to be not white on the light green because it was a little hard to read. The dark green works better I think. Then I also updated the rewards on the right and was much happier with this direction! I used the same rounded shape from the top name box and color-coded them with the reward colors to make it more clear. I'm feeling like this is the right direction now, so I feel like I'm getting much closer to a final design with this. It feels more integrated. I'm not 100% on the colors, but maybe after coming back to it later, I'll make the final call on it.

I decided to go with the design on the left more where there's not a white outline. Then I got feedback about the shape of the Birdian symbol working against the design. So I decided to warp the shape around a bit to make it fit better around the cost number. It went through a lot of minor iterations and I ended up changing the Point and Alert symbols too so they would look different. I also added some more negative space to the Birdian and Alert symbols in the rewards to further differentiate them.

Then I went back to design the starter cards and what their top symbol would look like. I didn't want it to be the Alert symbol so I decided to design something new. I was trying to decide what symbol to put in there as well to indicate that it's a starter card. I ended up using eggs/a nest to indicate this.

From there, I wanted to figure out how to indicate that you'd be losing points or Birdians for certain cards. I wanted it to pop out more with a different color so it'd be more obvious that it was subtracting. I decided to use a red background to show this.

So then I finally imported all of these assets into nanDECK and was able to update my final card layout to match the tests I had been doing in Photoshop. I'm happy with how the card design is coming out. It's improved a lot since I started! And this was thanks to a lot of back and forth with Jinny where I would show her my design and she would give me feedback and make suggestions. It was a fun day of really honing in on this design.

And then from there, I did some prints to see how they looked on paper! I'm still a little on the fence about the colors of the symbols on the right. Some of them might not have enough contrast or be too dark (like the group-specific symbols), so I might have to play around with those a bit. And I'm not 100% sure about the negative space when the symbols are so small. So I might adjust a few things, but I'm getting close!

So after printing them out, I decided to redesign some of the group symbols, change colors on a few of them, then recreated all of them using the Pen Tool. Vector art is always a bit of a challenge for me since it's a lot more mechanical than freeform drawing, but I was pretty happy with how most of these turned out.

And from there, I saved a bunch of the parts out. Then I came up with a new idea on how to implement the ability icons on the card. I had to change the color of the ability circle to match the dark background because some of them weren't standing out anyways. So I started playing around with some ideas to make it much more clear that the icon is associated with the text at the top instead of the ability itself. I'm feeling pretty good about this direction! I'm leaning towards the first one pictured below currently. Though it's the most work, I think it's working the best.

 

I ended up exporting all of the pieces to use in nanDECK. Then I test exported a few cards just to make sure everything was looking how I wanted it to. I moved a few things around slightly, but overall am happy with how it turned out!

I made a slight adjustment to the starter cards to use a unique letter instead of all being "S" (since it read a bit as a "5"). This way I could make them more recognizable with which deck they belong to. It also helps for anyone who may be color blind so they have another way to determine without relying on colors. With this, I renamed Dark Dragon to "Zoldith". I'm not 100% on the spelling yet, but I know I want his name to start with a Z at least.

And I did a quick test to see if I wanted to move the cost of the groups on the Linkship Pilot cards to the left where the other cost is to make that a bit more obvious. I couldn't really find a position I liked as much, so I decided not to go with that change though. 

So that's it for this post! I'm making a lot of progress on the card's design and not looking to make huge changes going forward. I'm finally feeling like this design is finalized and happy with how it's coming out. It's always a great feeling when I get to that stage of it feeling official. I still need to do some testing and polish, then I'll make the decision on if it's truly the final design, but I know that I'm very close, if not already there.

CUPdate 93: The Nays Writing & Wiki Organization

One of my favorite parts about having extended stay at home vacations is that I usually end up diving back into The Nays and getting in the zone for writing and developing a bunch of new story moments. During Christmas break, I spent a lot of time re-reading Eventures and then rewriting some. I also worked on writing scripts for the Eventure Trailers that I've been gradually working through.

So for this CUPdate, I'm going to go through the progress I've made on The Nays so far this year!

I ended 2025 by starting rewriting the AV World Eventure. I didn't finish it in one night though, so I ended up finishing the rewrite in 2026 a couple of days later. It technically counts for my 1 solo Eventure of the year written, so that's one goal checked off already! I imagine I'll write more later though.

I also rewrote a lot of The Gek's Nephew Eventure. I usually write all of my Eventures in mIRC, but this one and finishing up AV World actually happened in Google Docs, which was a really weird transition for me. I've always felt a lot more comfortable writing in mIRC because of the commands I have set up, but for anything that involves keeping a lot of existing text and just making edits, I do think the Google Doc method works better. So I'm trying to do whatever feels right for the situation.

While reading through a bunch of Eventures, I also was writing the Eventure Trailer scripts to act as a recap for them. I had a goal in previous years to write more of these and never got far, but I wrote 10+ of them in a week, so I'd say that was pretty good progress. I just got into the habit of writing them after I did a copy edit pass and read through the Eventures. I added a new section at the top of my Google Docs for this so I can quickly read those recaps before starting when I dive back in.

And to start off 2026, I also drew my yearly Cipo drawing. I wanted to find an Eventure that he was in and just draw one of my Eventure drawings for a future Twine, so I found a scene in the Death Eventure to draw that's towards the start of that one.

I also started working on The Nays timeline again. I had an old version but there were so many changes to the story that it was starting to be outdated. So I made it look a little nicer and I've been working from the beginning of the story as I finalize the beginning Eventures to further solidify those dates. I added these dates to the Eventure pages on the Weebly too, so it's easier to see at a glance how much time passes in Eventures.

I've always wanted to make a wiki for The Nays. Every time I brainstorm how to do it or try something, it just doesn't feel right though. I've tried Toyhouse, Notion, Google Docs, Weebly, etc. But I'll spend about a day or few days on it, and then forget about it, or just not maintain it. Though I realized that whenever I want to remember something about a character quickly (whether that's their design, personality, etc.), I always go straight to my Deviant Art account. I've drawn ~600+ profile drawings from my old Nay-A-Day project and submitted it there, so it's really been my go-to place to look for information while I'm writing.

So with that, I decided to expand upon that. Because I'm already looking there and use it as a resource, why not just make that resource better and turn it into my wiki? So one of the few new features I actually like about Deviant Art's new design is that you can upload multiple deviations and add some basic formatting like bullet points and headers without code. This means I can have multiple reference images technically nested within the same deviation so I don't have to go looking for them elsewhere. I could change the main image to the one I want to show while still preserving the original nested within it too. So I started to add profiles to the main characters, adding sections and links whenever necessary. I took a lot of this information from my Weebly pages, but figured this will be an area I'll probably maintain more frequently.

Then I sketched a few storyboards of the AV World Eventure because the story moments were still pretty fresh in my mind. Sometimes it's hard going back to draw Eventure scenes after I wrote it years ago because I have to reimagine some of the scenes and remember where I left off. I tried to stay super rough with these so I could go quicker and just get my rough ideas out there.

So that's how I started the year! While it's not a lot of visual progress, I did do a lot of writing and organizing this time. I'm happy that I finally revisited and spent some time working on The Nays, because I really needed this and missed it a lot. 

Escape from Tag World Devlog 2: Card Design & Playtesting

So I took a few months break from working on this project to work on other projects, but I'm back to working on Operation Linkship, which I'm currently leaning towards calling Escape from Tag World.

I started out by just re-orientating myself and remembering where I had left off. I played a game in Tabletop Simulator and then took some notes on what's next to do with the project. The main notes I had were that it took a long time to build up the decks, so I'm looking to start the decks with a few more cards or provide more Birdians as awards earlier on so you can build your deck faster. Also figuring out ways to track if the player even has enough Birdians or Points to recruit characters in the center so they know how to strategize.

I also started coming up with ideas for names of decks, playing areas, etc. to try and integrate them more with the whole Tag World and Linkship theming. I'm still trying to figure out the best naming schemes, but I have some starting points.

Then I started to work on the symbols for the cards. I had really placeholder stuff there, so I wanted to start working out the details of the symbols to figure out what they'd look like. Some of these are still rough and I haven't transitioned most of these to the actual card prototypes yet. The ones with the question marks are the ones I'm most unsure of and might redo.

I worked on getting the concept symbols for the Birdians, Points, and Alerts on the actual cards in nanDECK and updated the formatting a bit for the cards. I also cleaned up the borders a bit to use shapes. I had another realization that showing a symbol more than once on the Linkship Pilot cards would be more clear than the x2 so I updated those as well. So I saved the cards out to be re-imported in TTS and as individual files.

Then I finally printed the first versions out so I could finally test the physical cards! I playtested a few games, just playing solo first to see how it went. It was a lot easier to test with physical cards as opposed to in Tabletop Simulator, because it was easier to move cards around physically and some of the abilities like searching decks were easier to do with a physical deck.

I also made some notes as I was playing. I wrote on some of the cards to make changes to abilities or costs while I was balancing so I could test those out without having to reprint right away.

I made some edits with changing up some of the colors and also changed which cards the player starts with. I decided to use the alert symbol in the top-left to indicate if it's a starting card and color-coded the top bar depending on which deck you're using. This would make it easier to sort the cards for replaying the game.

I had an idea for a logo to make the T in Tag World kind of like a tree and have a Linkship (or Pidgebeetle) circling around it. So I sketched a few concepts and kind of like the direction they're going, but I'll have to work on it a bit more to make it more finalized and official.

So then I did a lot more playtesting to really try and balance things out. I iterated on a lot of cards, writing on them to make them more balanced, and changing rules on how many cards are in the center Open Shelter area, cards drawn, etc.

I haven't had as much time as I'd like to work on this project unfortunately due to work and other external factors, but I'm glad to be making progress on the mechanics and solidifying those! Since this is a smaller project, I'll probably have a lot fewer posts than last year's project, but I'll continue to update you on how it's going in the posts to come!

Escape from Tag World Devlog 1: Initial Idea & First Prototype

In 2024, I created a board game called Nay Saga. I had originally thought I needed a break from making board games and would go back to video games... but then I saw the results of my game when my family played Nay Saga.

It inspired me to make another physical game. Something smaller scaled because Nay Saga ended up getting bigger and bigger. One of my original goals for 2025 was to really scope down and make something smaller so I could recover from some burnout.

So this brings me to 2025's project and what's currently called Operation Linkship (by the time you're reading this, it will have a final name, but this post was written in December 2024 when I first started this project).

I really wanted to focus on making a small game. One that fits in a small box and is a small amount of cards (~150-200 at most). And probably not any extra pieces outside of cards, or if there are, they'll be pretty limited.

This idea started because I had so much fun playing Party House in UFO 50. Originally, my brother and I were talking about making our own version of Party House with our characters just for fun and it wasn't going to go beyond that. Then we played Flip City, which was a game with very similar mechanics, but different enough to be its own game, and it was a physical card game version.

So I immediately started to come up with ideas about how I could make my own version that's inspired by these types of games but is my own experience with my characters. I was inspired by Party House in UFO 50, Flip City, Tea Dragon Society, To the Moon: Bestest Memories, and Parks. All of those have a deck building mechanics or "buying" of cards to slowly build a deck and collect points. I played all of these games very close to each other over Christmas break and it was a really fun mechanic that I wanted to create a game around.

I started by brainstorming a bunch of ideas for games about The Nays, based on Eventures and story moments. Then I limited it down to just ones that fell into this category. The first idea I came up with really stuck with me. When Cipo is first interacting with The Nays, he's helping them earn money to buy a linkship.

To tie this in, I thought about how there could be a mechanic where you're earning money to essentially recruit characters or pay them to join your team (which is your deck). Each character could have some kind of ability or action along with the following: a cost to recruit them, some kind of "points" towards winning, money that you gain when they're on your team, and a variable that adds to whether or not they'll contribute to you stopping your turn. All of the games I got inspiration from had some combination of those, so that's where I ended up on deciding the basics for what I wanted on the card.

From there, I started to sketch out lots of card concepts in my sketchbook. Because I already spent months designing the Nay Saga cards, I really wanted to keep this design simple and not make any of the same mistakes. I drew a few pages worth of sketches, using various games as inspiration and remembering the notes and feedback on the Nay Saga cards. I was still having a lot of trouble coming up with a design where the shapes were harmonious and were speaking the same language (as that's a piece of feedback that really stuck with me when I was struggling to come up with the Nay Saga cards).

Eventually, I decided to take a break from the thumbnails and try to make something in Photoshop to see if I could get any closer. I threw a few shapes together and mock-up text and colors. The rough colors and icons were really throwing off my ability to look at just the layout as a whole because of how rough they were and because they were clashing, but considering I did all of this in a day, I decided to settle on it for the time being until I came up with more concrete rules and details so I could have something to start with in terms of testing and quick prototyping.

I made a Notion page and a database of tasks to start to plan out the project. I'm mainly planning to have most of the preliminary concepting done during the first few months on the side of doing other projects (like getting back into The Nays), then completing the bulk of it during June and July. These dates are tentative, but a way for me to really scope it down and make sure I'm staying within what I have time to do so I can give myself a break this year.

Then I started on the spreadsheet where I laid out all of the characters and started to come up with numbers for their different stats. I largely based the layout and tabs on the one I made for Nay Saga, but revised it to fit with this game instead. I also ended up coming up with some abilities for them, which led to potentially adding more symbols to the card. So I'll definitely be changing the initial card designs I concepted earlier in the day to fit more with the specifics that I started to expand upon. I'm mostly keeping ideas in a Notion doc and my Discord channel so it's pretty loose and everything in this post is likely to change once I start fleshing things out more.

I spent a lot of time working on the spreadsheet for the database. While working on it, I expanded it even more and started to come up with more rules and fleshed out the game when I came up with all of the abilities. I was starting to figure out which cards the players would start with, so I added a few more cards as well that would be similar or the same abilities, just to have a few more at the start.

I decided that each character will have a "group" that they're part of and there will be 12 special cards that you're basically trying to collect so you can win the game. The first person to collect 3 of them face up in their deck while they're playing wins. So I made each of these cards have abilities and conditions to earn points from certain groups to buy them. And then you can use them if you have half the amount of points you spent (you'll just have to spend those points on your turn). I ended up making the special cards on their own tab and added commented-out areas in nanDECK to make automating them easier, so I can just do 2 exports to line everything up correctly.

Then I started to sketch some icons to use for the different groups. Some of them I might just mostly reuse what I made from Nay Saga if they make sense, but I might change up the style of them and not use the exact drawings (just the same symbol). There were a few I wasn't super sure about, but I did some sketches to try and figure some of those out.

Then I started to come up with the overall story more in-depth and goals so I could name the values/points/etc. I know the "money" or currency you use to purchase one of them (probably the regular character cards) will be called Birdians, to fit with the Tag World theme. I'm still trying to think of a more creative name for the special cards and the points you use to purchase them. I'm thinking maybe Linkship pilots are the cards and then I'll have to think more about the points/credits you use to purchase them. And then finally, the negative points going towards ending the round are probably going to be called Alerts or something of that nature, since the idea here is that the characters are messing up and alerting the Higher-Up Birds accidentally, so they have to be sent back to their Shelters and not escape Tag World if there are too many. So I started sketching some of those symbol ideas.

I brainstormed a few ideas for logos and titles. I'm still not really sure what it's going to be called, but the more I started to think about the whole Tag World theming and involving the Higher Up Birds/Bird-in-Trainings, I'm kind of leaning more towards "Escape from Tag World". I just don't know if it has the right ring to it or if it's too long. But some of these logos came out okay for the first drafts.

I decided to come up with ways to integrate the symbols into the overall design more for the digital version. I made a very rough idea to turn the symbol for the cost into the Birdian or Points symbol so it's more clear what you're using it for. I also played around with putting the group name at the top since that's more important, and then the character's name at the bottom near their ability to show that's the unique ability that they're bringing (along with the symbol for their group). This example (below) is using the longest group and longest character name to ensure they fit. I also spent a bit of time looking for fonts, so I'm thinking about using Cabin. Because this card game will require more text on the cards, I was looking for a font that isn't entirely capital letters and is Sans Serif so it'd be easier to read more of the text.

I saved all of the card files out from my rough concept so I could start to quickly iterate on this prototype. I threw it all together in nanDECK and saved out all of my image files. Luckily I had a lot of experience doing this with Nay Saga, so it was pretty straightforward. This one had a few more moving parts because it has more text and variables that change between cards, but it wasn't bad. I also had all of the character drawings from Nay Saga that I could reuse for this. I might even reuse them (and just reposition them) for the final version even since it'll save me a lot of time and make this a much smaller scaled project.

Then I saved them out to be usable in Tabletop Simulator. I imported them in and was able to start testing out the game already! It's amazing how quickly this can go with these tools. I was able to come up with the idea and then, about 2 days later (of working on it), already have a playable version in TTS!

So I did some testing in Tabletop Simulator and I took a lot of notes on areas to update with the rules and cards. It ended up being pretty fun, but I definitely have a lot of updates to make based on those tests.

I made a few updates to the cards based on my first playtest to balance some of the cards a bit better. I added another card to the starting group and modified some of those so it's easier to gain Birdians in the beginning. I decided to change up how you play the special cards as well to see if that would make it go a bit faster. Once I made the updates, I loaded them into Tabletop Simulator to further test and see how it worked.

After some more playtesting, I updated the balance of some of the cards further to add more points to cards you'd get later in the game, because I noticed it was taking a long time to get even the first special card. I added some new formulas in Google Sheets and nanDECK to further automate the cards. I wanted it to be more clear when cards were subtracting points vs. adding them, so I made some formulas to change the image and text color depending on if it's subtracting.

 

I also made some updates to the card visuals so the values on the right side are shaped uniquely so it's easier to tell what values they're contributing to. I also reflected that at the top depending on what type of cost they are to recruit them (Birdians vs Points).

Then I figured out how to add icons to the text in the ability section so I could more clearly indicate what the cards were talking about without the player needing to memorize a bunch of specific terms. This includes replacing the Points, Birdians, and Alerts with their symbols and then also adding the symbols before the group names when they're referenced. In addition, I added some mock-up colors for the cards. I'm still trying to decide if I want the name or the group at the top (leaning towards name so the group can be next to the icon it's associated with).

Next, I'm going to continue to playtest so I can iterate on the layout of cards! I'm hoping to nail these down before I make any final assets so I can just focus on the gameplay without having to worry about how the cards look (since they're still pretty rough right now).