❖ Version History ❖

17th of February 2022
In the last few posts of the Design Journal, we’ve been discussing the usage of textures to make color alterations that are more visually pleasing than matte color to the naked eye. When the graphics on these elements had been adjusted for the whole set of cards in the game, I decided that it was time for a third iteration print test of the game to see how progress was being made overall (and honestly, I will always be trigger shy about the usage of textures because of how poorly that went with some of my oldest print tests).It had also been over a year since the last time that I had a new set of cards made for Calendra, and the poor deck & box of my previous set had begun to decay from how much they had experienced through play tests in the last year or so.

By the beginning of November in 2021 this newest set had arrived, and the look of the card designs in person was probably one of the most wonderful moments I’ve experienced in my game design history. The cards were perfect in color and tone. All of the coloration within the letters was totally clear, and the text was happily legible in front of the background textures as well.

November, December and January brought a harsh winter this year, but that was all the more reason and excuse to sit down to some snowed-in game nights where we play tested Calendra and various other games in the works as much as we could. The look and feel of Calendra has really come so far, but as it was observed in play testing there still seemed to be some subtle details that could be improved before achieving a final product.

But what sorts of details are really lacking at this point?
Well, for starters, one complaint that has been brought up several times is that the rule text on the playing cards is too small to read. Players are very happy that there has been a font switch (which we will discuss now as well), but they want the card to be expanded in the lower region to make lettering larger. So, first take a look at the old design:

As you can see, the box where the rule text is currently located is actually taking away from how large the text can be. I had originally laid it out this way, because I wanted it to seem like the text box was literally attached to the frame with the card ability symbol on the left. However, though this was visually useful in that way, it is far more important for the players to be able to read the text, and so the frame here must be re designed. So, I went back in and expanded the box to reach all the way across to the number on the bottom right corner of the card, and removed the bottom of it entirely to achieve this:

Not only did I need to expand the frame however, I also needed to expand the very subtle box of brighter and more opaque color that makes up the background in this area (see the difference in the top and bottom half of the small image above). This discoloration by comparison to the rest of the background makes it ever so slightly easier to read the text that gets placed in here.

Once the framework was complete, I needed to make certain to alter the text as well by improving some wording on a few of the cards that had also been discussed in play testing, and making all of the lettering consistently larger for every card. The end result of this process became our 4th Iteration digital design:

After some hours of making this change to the whole design, things were really looking finished for the playing cards of Calendra… but what else might have been troublesome from the third iteration of the game?

As it turns out, much work still needed to be done on: the rule card design, the rule book design, the box design, and some changes to certain statistics within the number system of the game had been discussed as well. But for more on that you will have to stop back in on our next chapter of the Design Journal!