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Alright everyone, and welcome! Time for the very first ever dev update I suppose. Who we are, where are we, what we have to do, what we're missing, and so forth. A status check if you will.
Who we are...
Who we are...
"We" here is doing some heavy lifting. Like, olympic level lifting... It's really "me". As of today, this is a one person project. I'm just some guy who loves games, both videogames and tabletop games, and has studied these things basically their entire life.
I've long toyed with the idea of making my own game. I've spent years conceptualizing my own games in general, and this card game specifically, in my head, but it was only last year (2024), after a sudden epiphany of game design, that I decided to actually try to make it a real thing. So I did. So I took a couple of pieces of paper, sleeved them up proxied on top of some other cards, and here we are.
I'll hopefully go into that process at a different update, but for now: Hi. You may call me ProxyDamage. My online allias. I'm weird, and often abrasive, and I love games and game design more than almost anything else in the world really.
Where we are...
Where we are...
Current status:
Game mechanics are feature complete.
Balance is tentatively done. I'd estimate 90% complete.
There's a lot more testing to go through, because I REALLY want to get this done right the first time around, because you can't really "patch" a physical game that easily and all, but it should only be small tweaks from here.
Art assets are missing
The card frame will probably be final;
Card art is missing, currently using AI placeholders;
Artist is almost certainly decided, require funding to pay them;
Card back is missing;
Logo is 50% in - I have the design I want, but I have negative skill in vector art and the likes;
Box and box art: missing, researching;
Life/Mana/Mana Regen counter design: missing, researching;
Website and social media: ... in development.
Need to acquire a domain.
Production and distribution: still under research.
I'm currently writing this in an unfinished and unpublished website, so... yeah. A lot of work to do. A lot of it outside of my area of expertise. I'm comfortable with the actual game design, directing, writing... But web development? Figuring out production and distribution pipelines? Yeah... This is as far from my comfort zone as asking Gordon Ramsay to direct London's Royal Ballet. Still, such is the life of an indie developer of any kind. You gotta figure it all out as you go and just hope you don't make too many (or too critical) mistakes.
AI is good enough for prototyping, but I want real art, by real artists, in the finished, commercial, product.
But anyways, as far as the game itself is concerned, it's mostly some extra testing (working on that asap) and art that's missing. Art is by far the most expensive thing: my game does not require a lot of art, but the art is important, and I'm not currently skilled enough (not even close) to make it myself and do it justice.
The current "pretty prototypes" rely on AI art, which looks good enough for what it is, but while I'm ok with using AI for prototyping purposes I want the final, commercial product ready, art to be... Well... Real art. Done by real artists. While I don't need many individual pieces of art, the average price for comissioning something like this, with full commercial rights, is in the hundreds of Euros/Dollars per piece, and realistically that means it'll require something like a kickstarter to really fund that side of things.
The artist I have in mind is pretty cool, I already talked to them and they were receptive. Very cool and unique art style, but... nothing is set in stone, so more on that when it's finalized.
If we somehow crush funding and get enough extra, I have some cool ideas including shipping the final game with alternative arts for cards and such.
The frame itself is probaly final. Again, nothing set in stone, but I comissioned a friend, the lovely JeanineUsagi, and... I'm really happy with the end result. It's simple, minimalistic, and makes the art pop. Exactly what I wanted. Unlikely to change.
Card back is... temporary. I might go with just a simple frame and the logo. Maybe. We'll see.
The logo itself is already decided on, design wise, but I have no ability to create it. I've dabbled in many forms of art over the years, but vector art, and all everything associated or in the same area, are basically alien to me. So I'll probably comission someone to do that. Placeholders meanwhile with the most basic version of it I can do.
A little further away are boxing options and life/mana/mana regen counters. I would like to invest in having a slightly more interesting box than a cardboard cube with pictures, and having some ideas for that, help it stand out in shelves and such... But still early on in that area. Life (and such) counters are are also a cool idea that I think I can get done with relatively low production costs. In both cases, they're "nice to have", and will definitely include them if possible, but if not a simple box with cool art and some dice will work fine.
Where we're going...
Where we're going...
As in, the steps immediately ahead: Finish getting the website reading, mailing list, start getting word out on the game, pushing the name out as much as possible in preparation for the Kickstarter, while also figuring out the full production costs and finalizing ideas for the box and counters: We need a pretty close estimate of the full cost of bringing this to life before the Kickstarter opens... I don't want this to be one of those projects that "guess"/loosely eyeball the total wildly, then fail because they're way off the mark.
I know some unexpected costs are likely. I know some things won't go as planned. But there's a difference between having a plan and just going in wildly swinging hoping to hit the mark.
And... That's where we are right now? Probably a lot more I could say but it's getting late and I'm starting to lose my thread of thought. Until next time! Now back to work!
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