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Anthony Boydell
United Kingdom
Unspecified
Unspecified
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I went into my shed this morning (you know, the kind of thing you all need) and dug out various prototypes. As well as the last 15 years of designing and (vastly-increased) playing resulting in more complex (and more polished) work, the quality of the play-test copies / prototypes has also improved markedly.
The earliest of designs (see below) tended to be card-based, and the prototypes reflect the tools I had at the time: paper, an old PC with CorelDRAW on it (no scanner) and, laughably, a laminating machine. Without exposure to Eurogames with their tiles and their wooden pieces, or deck protector sleeves, the 'design space was limited and the process of component production was time-consuming and tortuous:
a) layout card sheet template and print it
b) run all prints through again on the other side with a solid black fill
c) draw a picture on EVERY card (colouring in is optional)
d) laminate all card sheets
e) cut out cards
See Coppertwaddle - I didn't even bother to draw pictures, as I had a minimal library of reference books (boy has THAT changed) and low confidence in my 'straight' drawing ability:
See Bloody Legacy (or, as it was first known: Hesketh's Legacy) - rough and ready cartoon impressions - again, around a long time prior to me having the tools and the environment to illustrate properly:
See B.O.G - the ultimate in 'hand-produced' - 300+ cards meant I've never made a backup copy of this:
How about Autumn Leaves (still unpublished) - an Uno variant with a leafy theme. I seem to recall I actually over-heated a laminator putting this one together (and emptied a toner at work to get the black backing):
Still a card game, but I went for a design aesthetic for Scandaroon - based on the background layers on the final version of Coppertwaddle; I like it's plain-ness, it's 'iconic' nature - in a way, my attempt to give proper suits in the published version weakened it IMHO:
Between Bloody Legacy and Scandaroon, I really stepped up a gear in terms of graphic work by putting together the ridiculously ornate Tara, Seat of Kings art - the prototype was Alan Paull's (I had no control over putting that together), but the Celtic knot-work and the hidden jokes took me 3 months elapsed time in total - I'd pop into the studio for 30 mins here and an hour there and add more curls and swirls:
Confidence rising, lots of experience (doing your own artwork saves a LOT of money) and a Dad with a large workshop lead to the best prototype so far - Totemo:
A proper visualization - and the nearest thing to a prototype being the final version that I've come up with! It would be four more years before Totemo became a reality, with a retro-step in terms of 'mock ups' coming for Fzzzt! - mind you, I'd built up a massive collection of card sleeves by then (no more lamination for Uncle Tony):
In recent years, most of my WIP designs are full-on board games and have the requisite cards, boards, tiles and wooden furniture. Powerpoint is simple and effective enough to provide play-test layouts, scanned docs and iPhone photos can be quickly pasted into templates and the whole thing feels more complete. Being of a slightly obsessive nature, these elements go through many more iterations of tweaking. I abhor crossings-out, extra handwritten text and the like - it all has to be 'just so' - and why not? It all helps your test groups to 'visualize'...
Guilds of London (circa version 11):
Mountain Railway (circa version 8):
Ticket To Ride: Ivor The Engine (version 4) - even for what will be a print&play fan board, the need for a presentable prototype is overwhelming:
Give it 5 years and we'll all have 3D printers in our living rooms too - I look forward to the prototyping possibilities THAT's gonna provide!
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