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!