mr boss' design lair: July 2024

This post chronicles the 2nd installment of the creation of my game "Oh No! There Goes Tokyo" - a micro-crowdfunding game that I started at the beginning of the year. You can find part one here.

My initial prototype used a paper map. But as you can see, it was prone to wrinkling which would cause the windup monster to get caught on the folds. So paper was out!

A side note, all of the provinces on the map are color-blind friendly colors.

I decided to go with a cloth map. For the map, I used the same printer I used for Escape from Rotter Mansion - Contrado (https://www.contrado.com/) - the print-on-demand business who prints on just about any kind of cloth material.

I also decided not to go two-sided because I wasn't sure if Contrado could do it and I was worried that it might bleed onto the other side. A Los Angeles map will just have wait to be the sequel.

Contrado was very quick to ship and I couldn't be happier with the final product!

The map is sturdy, can be ironed if it need to be flatten and will fit nicely in the box! They look great!

They do exactly what I want them to do - don't trip the monster and lie flat and have bright colors. I do need to trim off the loose threads but other than that, they're ready to go!...and don't blow your nose with it, it's only for game playing!

I went to the First Play LA event - my first outing in 10 months - to play test Oh No! There Goes Tokyo in May. This is a regular play testing event held every month at Geeky Teas and Games. There are usually a fair amount of game designers present to help test games.

The first session was a three player game, myself included, and while the game went well, the numbers were wildly skewed at the end of the game.

I think the final money totals were $6, $64 and $128!! That’s too wide of a spread!! So I adjusted some of the rules and costs for the second play test.

The second play test was four players and this time I sat back and took notes. Again the game played well and the players had fun but the economy was completely out of balance. The numbers were closer except for the winner who tripled the other’s totals. Again, not good! They also gave me a few interesting ideas to test out.

The good news is the primary issue with the game is the game’s economy. The economy can be easily fixed - it’s just numbers and values after all - but I was pleased that everyone really enjoyed the heart of the game, building skyscrapers and knocking them over with the windup monster. (What’s not to like?)

Overall it was extremely helpful and good to “get back into it."

Meanwhile, many of you have expressed how much you liked the art on the prototype so I've decided to use it for the final game. It's either this or AI art at this point.

In order to prepare the art files, first I scan the prototype cards as .jpg files. These are brought over to my laptop via thumb drive where I drop them into my working file folder.

Then begins the tedious but necessary process of turning the card art into individual cards. I "cut" the graphics out of the source file and paste them into a new card template. The art is cleaned up so they will look good when printed.

Each individual element needs to go through this. I will usually make one Photoshop file per card type. It might not be the most efficient way to go about making these (there are programs for this like Nandeck or InDesign but I've never gotten the hang of them) but don't mess with what works, right?

The files are "flattened" into one image and saved individually for preparation to be imported into the printer's online tool. I will probably use https://www.printerstudio.com/ - a printer I have used many times for my prototypes - I like them because they have the "clearest" tool I've found. It can get confusing dealing with lots of different types of cards, so the clearer the tool is for me, the less mistakes I will make.

However, I'm not quite ready to send these to the printer as I am still play testing the game and it might affect what goes on the final cards. Better to make sure everything is correct than pretty.

Also, I haven't designed the logo for the game yet, which will go on the back of the cards. Once I get that done, we will be closer to having a final component.

I don't know if all of this is interesting to anyone, but I find it helps to review my production process!

Since my release back into humanity, I have been keen to play test "Oh No! There Goes Tokyo!" with actual humans, so I've taken the game to a few local play testing events.

A big shout-out to First to Play LA (https://www.meetup.com/first-to-play-los-angeles-board.../), an awesome event hosted by Peter Vaughan and held at Geeky Teas & Games. Because the event is a healthy mix of game designers and gamers, I know that I will receive great feedback on the game.

As mentioned earlier, I was having an issue with the money causing the final scores to have huge differences. I asked my son, who has a great mind for numbers and designing, about it and how the money was causing problems with the score. He said "F**K capitalism, make the final scoring about what the players have done."

So I created some end-of-game objectives - things like "most two story buildings standing by the end of the game" or "who has the most adjacent buildings" or "who rescued the most meeples". Did I mention that there is now meeple rescuing in the game? It must have slipped my mind.

There was hooting. There was hollering. Every one appeared to have a good time playing. Granted, I've only tested this version of ON!TGT! twice, but the ending game scores were much more in line with what I wanted to see! Success!

Meanwhile at home, I am prepping tokens for printing. You think making cards is dull, howabout resizing tokens? Mind-numbing.

I am also starting to think about the cover. I think I already know what I want it to look like, but boxes have four sides. And an interior. And a back. And maybe even an inside interior... so much art and other assets left to produce!

Oh, a fun extra. I found some pages in my notebooks when I first came up with the idea.

My latest play test with the new objectives was a complete success! So that means I have to recreate the cards for as print files. Of course this means scanning the hand-drawn cards from the prototype. My scanner doesn't have proper "guides" to show where the scan is happening so I had to rescan the cards three times to get all of the information into the computer. Slightly frustrating when you consider that my laptop is upstairs and my scanner/printer is downstairs. At least I'm getting a workout running up and down and up the stairs!

The other issue that came up in the play test was that certain color schemes had consistently low rent values while others had higher. If you had purple you were "screwed" with a 2 rent. I decided to fix that by distributing the rent payouts to 2-3-3-4 per province rather than by color.

This gives all the color properties a fairly even chance to payout better and more evenly to the players. I went through and assigned numbers on the map based on two criteria: how close they were to a real urban population center in real-life Tokyo and how close they were to a Kaiju rampage spot on the map. Overall, I'm happy with the distribution and am eager to play test it. NOTE: These values will be represented on the cards, not on the map.

As I am making cards, I realize that cards need card backs which means I have to design an image, if not just a logo for my game. I had been noodling around with something simple - a big bold hand-drawn lettering to match the somewhat goofy style of the game.

I had already draw several ideas for the cover: Mostly the kaiju rampaging and people screaming as building toppled over. The configuration was really the only thing I played with as I knew early on what vibe I was going for.

The people proved to be a little bit of an issue: do I make them Japanese as the game takes place in Tokyo? Ultimately, I played it safe and made it a mixed assortment of people fleeing. No need to give others a reason to complain.