This is the third part of the Design Diaries series. You can find Part I here.
Breathing life into death
At the start of this journey I set out to design the game alone, along with the support of my partner and close friends. They helped me keep the project on track with a combination of hard truths and endless patience for my obsession. I really did not think about publishing, other than as a possible abstract idea. For the longest time the game was simply not ready, which meant I did not have to take the proposition seriously. As it slowly improved however, the idea started pushing on my mind.
The mechanisms were slowly taking shape, but still in the form of my hand-cut black-and-white copy and excel-tables. In a fit of pure impulse I started looking around for an artist. Someone that could help me flesh out the theme and visuals that I imagined the game needed. By the purest of luck I ran across Sergey on the BGG forums and we started developing the characters of the game together.
Sketch and final version of The Detective
I suddenly realized the cost it would mean to put color to this vision of mine, but I was also taken aback by how talented and skilled Sergey was at making the characters I had designed come to life. We worked well together, and it was a lot of fun. Publication or not, this was happening. During the winter of 2020/2021 we created a lot of the characters, revision after revision. Sergey also set the style of the art and the general themes of visitor and spirit design.
After this I really had put myself into a bind. I now had spent a non-trivial amount on art, which still was likely only 25% of the total needed to finish the game, and I had a half-finished game to accompany it. Perfect. I thought about pitching the game to a publisher, but realized it would not work. I knew a publisher would want to develop and change the game to appeal to a wider audience, maybe moving away from the vision. Perhaps they would not approve of the art-style, the themes of the game are mature and not suitable for all audiences. I did not want to give up ownership, this game would be made as intended, or not at all.
Anonymous WIP piece of spirit art. Unused.
A Twist of Fate
Publishing myself was still a distant idea as the work it would require was significant. As sometimes happens, fate intervened. Around that time I started discussing it with a friend of a friend; Leonie. As a designer and artist along with hobbyist board gamer she was curious and found the project interesting. Having designed a boardgame as a thesis project and also interested in the idea of developing one professionally we slowly started discussing things like icons, art and design.
It was mostly for fun at the start, I showed her the concept and theme, the icons I had been using as placeholders. The art that was already in place and general aesthetic style of the game. We started jumping between small parts of the project and while I realized that I had vastly underestimated the time and commitment it would take to actually finish everything, we were having a lot of fun.
2022 – Brainstorming refreshments!
It took a while, but as we got to know each other better we realized we complemented each other well. She had all the skills I did not; graphic design, illustration, web-design, social media and brought an incredible amount of positive energy and enthusiasm. Together we could do this. During the spring of 2022 we started for real. We were about to find out it is a very different thing developing a game for real, compared to doing it as one’s hobby side project..
It all comes together
Leonie started with the icons. It was a natural starting point as they were to replace my prototype icon-set and could be used to start testing functionality out of the gate. The new set massively improved the functionality and theme, and while we are still revising it with testing it holds up very well so far.
She then moved onto design themes, fonts, graphic design, card frames, color schemes and art itself, while I continued to focus on testing, revising and expanding the game content. It was a massive undertaking, and one that would have been impossible to do alone. The components have gone through numerous revisions and a great many lessons have been learned in the process.
Prototype, early and current (still WIP) spirit card design.
One of the largest single projects was the art for the board itself. It took Leonie 3 months of work in the summer of 2022 to finish the first draft. The final version helps breathe life into our haunted manor in a way that I would not have dreamed of when first setting out on this winding path. We’re both very happy with it and look forward to seeing it be played on by others!
Since then we have been learning, revising and updating both graphics and layout. I realize we probably spent way more time than a professional company would, but we needed to. We had to learn. Meanwhile the game itself was taking shape in the background and playtesting continued.
Parts of the board and WIP components.
Conclusions
Setting out on a journey like this may be longer and more winding that one imagines. Even with all the energy in the world it is hard to do things alone. Going from ‘I’ to ‘we’ can be unfamiliar and perhaps even scary, but what you can do together is so much more than what you can do on your own. In the end, regardless of how it goes you are sharing the journey, and that makes it all worth it.
This was meant to be a 3-part series, but the postscript grew out of proportion. Expect the fourth and final part very soon!
/Sam & Leonie