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Project Heracles - Design Journal, Day Four


Day Four(11/25/19)

After a full, but sadly gameless, weekend, I finally got some playtesting done today, as well as a rough draft for the graphic design of my cards.  Not too bad, but I wish I could have done more.

The playtesting mostly just verified that the system was solid enough, though I did end up doing a bit of power-tweaking to make things more even.  I’m considering taking out the more mundane abilities of Marksman, Brawler, and Multi-Tasker, as they don’t add much flavor, and they are impossible to reflect on the standees.  A possible replacement for Marksman(+3 Ranged Skill) would be X-Ray Vision(+1 Ranged Skill, Ignore line of sight).  Other than that, the only new content I’ve added is a new power, Flameskin(Ranged attack, and when you’re attacked in Melee, deal damage).

As for the graphic design, I’ve got a pretty decent draft for my cards done:



As you can see, it’s very rough at the moment, but I think it gives a pretty good impression of where I’m going with it.  The lightest blue-grey is where the art will go(obviously enough).  I’m thinking a blueprint-esque art style would fit well, but I might go for something more traditional in the long run.

As a side note for my any fellow designer reading this, I do my graphic design far earlier in the process that most people do, and truth be told, those people are right;  You really shouldn’t worry about aesthetics nearly so early in the design process.  I just find graphic design one of the most fun parts of game design(and that’s saying something!), so I do that near the beginning.  If it’s not your cup of tea, that’s great— just do whatever is most fun for you, and work out the nitty-gritty details later.

Well, that’s about all I got done today, but I’m not in a hurry to wrap this game up.  If it happens to be in a good enough state by February, I’ll enter it into TGC’s R&W contest, but if not, that’s just fine.  We’ll see what I can cook up tomorrow, and until then, keep on geekin’ on!

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