Hi folks,
It’s been a while since the last update, but there has been a ton of movement on the game design as well as the plan to playtest it and start getting more eyes on the product. I am pleased to finally announce the prototype of Planet Repossession Force!
I wanted to share my experience building this prototype from scratch. Below are the different tools I leveraged to bring this game to life for playtesting in a matter of 5 weeks:
Word Doc – It all starts here.
The story, the setting, the characters, the gameplay mechanics, the reward system, the player incentive… all of it starts in a document. I always knew what story I wanted to tell regarding characters and setting, but it is a different skill entirely to take a lore idea and integrate it into a fun game idea. Shoutout to former Blizzard principal game designer Rob Gallerani who recommended the brilliant MDA framework of Robin Hunicke, Marc LeBlanc and Robert Zubek as well as Nicole Lazarro’s 4 Keys of Fun in the player experience and A Theory of Fun for Game Design by Raph Koster. Studies from these thought leaders and industry pioneers are amazing resources to learn the fundamentals of taking fun ideas and turning them into tangible experiences that other people enjoy. These studies might not be gospel to everyone in gaming, but I at least found it to be a helpful framework.
Excel/ Google Sheets – This is where things get interesting.
If the document is where big ideas are captured, the spreadsheet is where all the little details flesh out the big ideas. This is perhaps the single most crucial step in the entire process as a game simply cannot be made without the little details. The spreadsheet is where I captured all the important game items (Creatures, Raids, Supplies, and Settlements) in Planet Repossession Force. Shoutout to Gabe Dal Santo from Pro Indy Dev/ 5K Indiedev and the FGGS methodology for this nugget of advice. I also used Excel to make the basic templates for the game board and Action cards. Building a strong foundation of the content before giving it a cosmetic treatment is key; substance before style.
Canva – The best “nice-to-have.”
This is not a necessary tool for most game designers, but I found it super helpful in crafting the rule book, lore book, player pads, and the game board itself after building the concept in Excel. Canva is an intuitive program for non-graphic designers like me since it offers an accessible suite of design capabilities. It may not be as in depth as other design programs out there, but it is good enough to build basic things such as a rule book. I found building the rule book while also creating the game itself was helpful since I could go back and forth between the rules and the Excel sheet game items to ensure any stats/ numbers and card mechanics were all well informed by the rules and vice versa. It also just makes the game “feel more real” when seeing a nicely designed basic rule book and lore book. I ordered the Canva-made prototype game board which turned out to be a canvas painting I can hang one day!
Dextrous – The one-stop-shop for building custom cards.
Huge shoutout to Dave Jeltema’s YouTube channel as he suggested this handy tool. The guys behind this software are based in Australia, and not only is the tool super easy to use (even for a caveman like me who barely knows any programming or graphic design), but Dextrous also offers some of the best customer service I ever encountered. They are a small but mighty team who are super professional. All you need to do in Dextrous is set up card template layouts, set up the data columns, and then simply upload the Excel sheet into Google sheets to save the sheets as a .CSV file. That file gets loaded into Dextrous and bam, you a whole deck of custom-made cards (with unique card backs if you want!) You might have to make a few tweaks to the data and/or images but overall, this tool rocks and I’d consider it a “must have” in indie board game/ TCG design. I should also note I used DALLE 2 to generate all the Action card artwork which came out amazing! AI-generated art will temporarily serve its purpose until we move from the prototype phase into publishing.
Make Playing Cards (MPC) + Boards Game Maker (BGM) + PrintnPlay (PNP)
As a first-time game designer, I’ve been testing out manufacturing capabilities of different production partners to see who is better at what. I have found MPC to be great at delivering the cards (no surprise given the name.) They had great customer service who were transparent with me for the whole project. For example, they flagged how some of the card bleeds might need to be readjusted for better printing, which they didn’t have to do before hitting ‘print’ but they did anyway. They seem very professional and proved to me they care about their customers. I had a similar experience with BGM when ordering the tokens for the game as they also had rather accessible and responsive customer service despite the time zone difference. PnP is simply who I chose to print and ship my prototype game board, but the shipping was a little pricier than I expected. With that said, I am overall very happy with my chosen production partnerships at this prototype stage as they all provided positive experiences. Also, one last shout out to Budget Print Center in Bloomfield for printing a great looking rule book!
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Now the fun truly begins with the project phase I have been personally waiting for: playtesting. The digital version is currently available on Table Top Simulator where players will have an opportunity to download the workshop mod and play. They are also invited to provide feedback in the game’s Discord server (and just get to chat with me!)
I will be visiting different comic/ game shops in New Jersey for physical playtesting. I am also super excited to participate in Metatopia 2023 in Morristown, New Jersey on November 2-5 where players, fellow designers, and potential publishers playtest Planet Repossession Force while I get to play other designers’ games!
Stay tuned for more updates to come. 😊
- M
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