Working on suite icons

So when I started working on invoke I never thought that I would have to create different suits. Turns out that I have already done so naturally.. Objects, actions, targets etc. during feedback on one of the playtesting sessions one of the players mentioned that it was difficult to tell "what was what". So I began to think about icons to show a clear difference between suits.

First concern was copyright. I wanted to ensure that all the icons were entirely of my design. Not that I mind paying for the rights to use someone else's hard work but I am a broke man.. So what does an artist do.. He designs his own.

I started by doodling as many concept sketches as I could on a single sheet of paper the idea was to get my brain out of any ruts. I must have drew over 50 different sketches. I did not spend too much time on anyone sketch because at this point all I was doing fishing for ideas.

I wanted to keep up with the magic theme. I researched magical symbols throughout history (discovering most websites on Viking runes are full of shit as none of them agree on the meanings).. The main problem was because i kept encountering conflicting meanings or designs that were directly related to an active religion. Out of respect to those who may still practice those religions I am going to avoid those symbols.

Examples of just some of the variations I created while working on the logo designs

After all that research and sketching I came up with a few designs that I think I liked. The next problem was they looked to amature like someone had sketched them on a piece of paper or something.

Knowing that I could not make the lines straight enough I chose not to paint these by hand.I opened up software I teach for presentations. The vectored graphics on this software will suit my needs nicely. Because these icons are going to end up the size of a thumbnail (or smaller) I really needed them to be sharp and easy to read. Black and white are the colors of choice for this design.

After creating the designs, I added them into gimp as a custom brush. Now I can add them to the existing cards easily.

For the target cards.. At some point, I was thinking about painting custom designs for the target cards however that is very time consuming and opens up the possibility for confusion. My current design uses the target in question suit as the primary artwork. This way just looking at the card you can see what suit is targeted by that card.

My next problem is that the factored graphics are very sharp and shows and inconstancy of design. This is fine for the suit icons in the upper left hand corner but not ok for the target cards as the icons look inorganic in comparison to the hand painted designs of the rest of the deck. My challenge is to alter the designs of the target cards enough to give the impression these images were painted by hand. I am currently researching other techniques to achieve this.

Knowing that I do have a tendency to try different designs that may be incompatible I have kept all the designs as layers making the previous design "invisible" . This allows me to go back to the a previous design at any point. 

Trying to explain Invoke to someone who speaks English as a second language.

Some things that you never think about till you have to explain it to someone who English is not their first lanugage.

So I have a very good friend of mine from Japan named Maaya. Later on when we start working on more video you will see more of her. (Well you are going to see a lot of her work... she does video editing) .. So we were talking about the video project today and she had asked to play Invoke because it will give her a better idea how she wants to set up the various shots. We started to play..  I want to mention that her English is really good.. But there are some words and phrases that slip through the cracks now and then.. So explaining a game like Invoke can be a bit of a challenge. During the process, I started to have to really think about how I explained the game. I really had to take a step by step and explain the "Why" you do something and not so much if the how you do it. Then I started to think, at what point is this different from having to explain to someone who has never played before.. What is a better way of expressing the concepts of the game... So I took some notes

• The why you do something is harder to explain then how to do something 
• Clearer and constant terms are needed .. such as subject vs target .
• Colours of the cards are a huge help. 
• Images on the cards are priceless. 
• A well written manual is helpful no matter how good you are at explaining a game. 
• Playing through 4-5 hands showing all the possibilities with out actually competing is also helpful . 
• Sometimes its better to have a group so they can watch the others play. 

So it was not long before she started to understand some of the more complex parts of the game. Once i described the game as a sentence it started to make sense. (Though the use of target cards needed some better explanation on my part) 

So there you have it.. what I learned from trying to teach someone how to play Invoke. 

Yes this means Invoke will be translated into Japanese soon ! (once the english version is working correctly) 

Things only play testing will tell you.

The things that only playtesting will tell you.
So one of the key things about playtesting is to look at things in actual game play.. Sometimes you have an idea of "Hey this would be an awesome card... there should be three of them in the deck" . What happens during playtesting is that you find that the card you thought should have been 3 in every deck really should be only one because it changes the game play.

So yesterday my good buddy Mike came over to pay test Invoke. We must have played 6 games.. Something that we discovered was that the deck was too small with 108 cards. Mainly because those 108 cards have been split up into the three decks. The result was that we had to shuffle the discard pile often. Now that is not too bad, but when you consider that the game is best played with 3-5 players each with 7 cards in their hands.. With additional 2-30 cards in play at any given moment. That does not leave a lot in decks... and that is only one round.. Sp I am going to have to make more cards types.. And increase the number of the cards.

From a game design point of view what this does be making the game harder to ship mainly because it's larger.. The printing cost also goes up. ... So it's all about testing different amounts of cards and comparing the price.

The Print-N-Play version 

So the Print & Play version of Invoke is still on its way. I'm thinking that I want to get that out as soon as possible. With the understanding that the rules are going to be located on the website. (make the printing of the rules option) because there are going to be lots of changes over the next few months. I have also decided that I'm going to wait a bit longer for the kickstarter.. Though I have had some success with the cards so far I and really wanting to have more momentum in the social media area first.

Off Topic ... Geek wisdom!

So the other day I was thinking about about being a gamer ... and anyone who follows me on twitter knows I am really big on equality! So I started to make a few images that crossed my mind.