❖ Version History ❖

July 1st-10th, 2022
Every once in a while, a magnificent leap forward takes place in the design process. Over the summer of 2022, I took a week of vacation, and this was one of the best progressions of Phoenix Farm’s life since Thanksgiving the year prior.

One half of this trip was spent with friends. My friend Sean and I had traveled to Jacksonville Florida to spend the week with another one of our best friends from college: Misty. The other half of my week was almost exclusively dedicated toward artistic development on Phoenix Farm.

While we had been in Florida, it was mid July… so it was no less than 99 degrees out & 100% humidity at all times. Sean and I had flown down for the week, so we had no car, and Misty had to work for three days of our stay. So for all 24 of those working hours, Sean played through a few video games while I ferociously doodled away at card designs on my iPad. It was a glorious nerdy time.

Here are the wonderful results of this week:

My first project for the week was to build the card frames. By now I knew that the front and the back side of the cards were going to be completely different (one for tools and one for the bird phases)… but I wanted there to be some similarities to the cards as well.

By similarity, I mean that I want the general shape of the card and layout of the information to feel similar for both cards, despite the fact that they have completely different functions in the end. To make this happen, I set down all of the grid lines for each card before putting down any artwork or other text based information.

As you can see in the images above, the tool cards all have some basic identical information:

•Checkerboard Card Outline
•2/3rds of the card is dedicated to art space
•The other 1/3rd of the card is broken into x3 sections (title, & rules)
•Every card features the same dice logos in the same locations
•Every card also features a tagline of text to pair with the title

All of this information is set up before any card artwork is actually placed. Additionally, before I actually go in and add any of the art, I make sure to flip to the other side of the card layout and prepare the frame designs for the Phoenixes:

As akin to the reverse side of the cards, where all of the tool information is, the Phoenix cards have some critical similarities:

•Checkerboard Card Outline —-> Became Stained Glass
•2/3rds of the card is dedicated to art space (Remains Identical)
•The other 1/3rd of the card is broken into x2 sections (title, & instructions)
•Every card features the same dice logos in the same locations (Not Utilized)
•Every card also features a tagline of text to pair with the title (Not Utilized)

For me, I find this kind of design really really important. It helps the user process the information, and it makes the flow of that information easier to digest as the cards are studied.

Once all of the frame designs were complete, it was time to add in all of the artwork. By this point, I have already drawn every single card in Phoenix Farm at least twice before in the making of our earlier prototypes, so I was quite familiar with the goals.

But, I wanted to make absolutely certain to capture as much of Aimee Hudon’s adorable artwork in this iteration of the prototype as well. She has added quite a flavor to the designs of the phoenix phases, and though I cannot use a direct translation of her doodles in the creation of the final product, I can at least try my best to reformat her art.

It takes most of the three days that we are in Florida to get through the designs of the different tool artworks… but once I’ve begun this process I absolutely cannot stop myself. we are so close to another prototype being complete that I am desperate to hit another checkpoint.

As a result, I came home from our trip and worked for four more non-stop days. In grand total, I probably spend about 65-70 hours on this prototype. Then it occurred to me. I would also need to incorporate a player mat into the designs. I swear to you, I tried to make this quick. I tried to make it only “sort of” built, with the hope that I would come back later to touch it up. But then of course, I spent another 15 hours building this design over the course of the last two days of my time away from work:

This was a very complete step forward. An entire new batch of card designs had been developed, and just about everything was ready to go. I just needed to upload everything into The Game Crafter website and get a copy of the art ordered. So, I batched everything into their editor, made sure to align the front and back designs of each card together correctly, and then I patiently waited for two weeks.

After checking the mail almost every day for a little while, it finally arrived. I had almost no time to honestly play the new prototype, because we were only weeks away from launching our final media campaign for Calendra, but we made sure to get at least one play test in with Ben to see how everything was looking:

Of course, in the moment of it, this phase of the prototype always feels like the game is totally done… that there is nothing that could possibly be changed in order for it to be “better”. But I have learned. I know for a fact that there are going to be countless additions and editions to the game from this point still. We have a lot of work left to do.

This being said though…

It is important to enjoy it all in the moment too.

This was a major change to the game, and it looks unbelievably beautiful on the table. Though it is of course going to still be worked on and improved, it feels great to get to this place.

For the time being, we are going to be taking another couple of months of break on the design process for Phoenix Farm (to run the Kickstarter for Calendra)… but we will be back in the later part of the Autumn / Winter to discuss the next steps in progress that we are experiencing the needs for and beginning to plan!

Check back soon for more adventures in the Librarium Games Design Journal!