Tag: tabletop games

Making ‘Card Bordz’ stage 2: Print and Playtest

~ Abi Marie Palmer ~ Leave a comment

Hi again, and welcome to my blog series about making my Print and Play game, ‘Card Bordz’. If you’ve just stumbled across this blog, you can also check out my first blog introducing the game. With the first eight cards designed, it was now time for printing and playing. I had already tested the game a couple of times on my hand-drawn sketches, but this part was much more exciting… it’s really starting to feel like the game is coming to life!

I formatted my cards into PDF pages using Microsoft Publisher (yes, I’m that old-fashioned!) and got them printed on glossy card at a local print shop. They came out about the thickness of a Pokémon card. I’ll have to carry these around for a few days, to see if they wear and tear easily.

I did four cards to each A4 page, so each card is roughly A6 size — bigger than a normal playing card. The cards needed to be big enough for instructions and also have space for tokens to move on. Plus, some minigames involve ‘snapping’ particular spots on the card, so the larger size is needed.

All that remained was to test it! My boyfriend and I played through all the cards using some random plastic figurines as tokens. They were a bit too large for the small boards — I think I’ll have to custom-design some small printable tokens — but it worked well enough. My personal favourite game was “Sandwich Dash”, which can be won or lost in just a couple of rolls. In most games, one player is ‘hero’, and the other the ‘villain’, so the game can be asymmetrical; some cards are biased towards the hero, and some towards the villain. I think this makes Card Bordz the fun kind of infuriating, but we’ll see what others think after playtesting!

The next step is to send to friends and family, so I can see what others think of the game! This can be the frustrating part, because it’s usually necessary to make a lot of changes after someone gives you feedback on the project. But it’s also the most important stage; making edits and responding to feedback is what transforms an average project into something that’s genuinely great! I want this to be something that plays smoothly and makes sense to all types of players.

Until next time…!

Developing my Print and Play game – design stage

~ Abi Marie Palmer ~ 1 Comment

As a kid, I loved minigames. Nitrome’s Sandman, Omar El Sawi’s Plantworld, anything by Ferry Halim, Warioware… they were like tiny portals into a hundred colourful universes, and they also got me excited about digital art for the first time. Nowadays, I play lots more board games than video games. But I still feel nostalgic about the charm and novelty that came with the minigame format. That’s where the idea for Card Bordz came from. I wanted to blend the minigame experience with a tabletop game. The result: a series of minigames on card-sized boards that can each be played in just a minute or two. The game is a hybrid — half board game, half card game. It is for two players, and all you need is a deck of ‘Card Bordz’, two counters, and two six-sided dice.

I am currently in the initial design stage of the game. About twenty cards have been drafted, and I have done artwork for eight. I am planning to release these first eight cards as a Print and Play “Pilot Pack” on itch.io in the next few weeks, after some play testing with friends and family. After releasing this first pack online, I’ll make further improvements, and develop more packs of Card Bordz minigames.

I’m documenting the process of designing and making Card Bordz so hopefully someone feels inspired to make their own game, or at least try out this one. This is the first game I have ever made, and although I have some design experience, I am a complete beginner to this hobby. I am basically making it up as I go along.

I started with some very rough sketches — literally, one-minute doodles. I played through about twenty of these with my friends, and I chose the eight that worked best to make into full cards. You can see an example below. I am debating whether to call this one “Dragon Roll” or “Scale Board”.

Stay tuned for more progress blogs over the next couple of days. I’m looking forward to making this project a reality and sharing it with other minigame enthusiasts!