Now that I'm working with artists, I'm starting to have to consider how my game will look once it's been printed. I've been using prototype cards and stickers that I've printed on my home computer for a while now. But I never really gave much thought about the differences in color between the computer screen and the printed version. I had noticed before that some colors didn't quite come out the same on paper, but I chalked it up to having a cheap printer.

Apparently this is more of a problem than I thought.

I know about color spaces in general. Computers represent colors using RGB (Red-Green-Blue) additive pixel values. Printers use CMYK (Cyan-Magenta-Yellow-Black) subtractive ink dots. But I guess I thought that the two were roughly equivalent, that a color on the computer screen would come out the same as on paper, if you just calibrated everything correctly. I guess not.

Then I saw some diagrams. Stuff about how some colors that can be viewed on the computer screen don't really have equivalents when printed. Some colors show up muted, dull, or grayish. I guess that meshes with what I was seeing; I was trying to use bright cyan colors for some of my icons and they came out looking kind of a dark greenish-blue.

From what I've been researching, a partial solution to this is to have the source image files be in CMYK format. If the art is originally made using those colors, then the translation to paper won't be as dramatic. Great, so I just ask my artists to give me files using that format.

Except, CMYK isn't a format. Okay, I can work around that. Some file formats handle CMYK data. PNGs don't. :(  Hrm, okay. TIFFs do. Better. But TIFF doesn't handle transparent bits, and I need icons and such that aren't exactly square. PDFs? Same deal. PSDs. Okay, that works. Those handle that color space, and can do transparency.

So...  what do I do with a PSD? I have editing tools that can convert those to other formats, but in the process, the image would get converted from CMYK to RGB, kind of defeating the purpose of having the artists give them to me in that format to begin with.

So, that just leaves... Photoshop. Meh. Expensive, and I'm not really that good with it. For putting the art pieces together, there's also InDesign. Again, meh. Same price problem, and I don't know that one at all.

Are there any other tools out there that can handle this type of file, from input through the pipeline to output, and that don't cost budget-shriveling sums of money? (Is this something the industry needs? Perhaps there's a potential for new software here.)

Oh well, at least Photoshop has a free trial. :P 

Mystic Tiger Games is pleased to announce that it is working with illustrator Jes Cole to create art for the cards in Manaforge. Jes Cole has previously created illustrations for children's books and educational materials, and now directs her considerable talents towards making art for games.

Check out her beautiful artwork on her personal website (www.jescole.com).

Welcome Jes! Let's make Manaforge look amazing!

Mystic Tiger Games announces that its game, Manaforge, is far enough along in development that it could start to benefit from obtaining final game artwork. So, to that end, we're announcing that we're looking to work with several fantasy illustrators to create art for the game's cards, boards, and rulebook. Both new and existing illustrations will be considered.

Examples of the types of art we're looking for are up on our DeviantArt page. (http://mystictigergames.deviantart.com/favourites/65299752/Manaforge-Style-Guide)  Note that these are just stylistic examples and won't be a part of the final game.

Any interested artists should contact Mystic Tiger Games for more information. Contact information is on the contact page of our website. Email and Facebook messages are preferred. Please send a link to any portfolio or other examples of your work that you may have.

I guess it was bound to happen. Not like I could call myself a real game developer while only having ideas for one game in my head.

I don't even recall exactly what I was reading at the time. I think I was browsing through the forums at Board Game Geek, and I found a discussion on types of game mechanics. That nowadays there aren't really any new game mechanics, just rehashes of existing ones. I think the thread was something about applying transformations to existing mechanics to try to create new ones.

I was reading through the messages, not really paying that close attention. 'Mutate like this...', 'change this part around...', 'break down instead of build up...', blah, blah.

I didn't notice my muse (the same one that gave me the idea that became Manaforge) sneak up behind me, tap me on the back of the head, and say "Here's an idea."

Ummm...  thanks? Now what do I do with it?

Granted, this idea isn't really what anyone would consider that innovative. Other people create new ideas by taking an existing idea and rearranging it somehow. Me personally, I'm better at taking two existing ideas and combining them. And that's basically what this new idea is, two mechanics smooshed together. However, to the best of my knowledge, nobody has done this before.

I'd consider using the mechanic in my current game (or in an expansion), but it's really such a core game mechanic that it wouldn't fit well in what I'm doing now.

So, essentially, I have an idea for a new game.

Great! Except, that I don't want to dilute my focus on Manaforge. I think one of the reasons why that game is still chugging along in development is because I've been able to focus solely on that.

So, I guess this idea goes on the back-burner. Maybe it'll sit there quietly and wait until I can come back to it. Maybe it'll sprout legs and start running around my head until I give it some attention. I don't know how other developers handle multiple projects. Me, I don't multitask well. I'm afraid Manaforge will suffer if I try to work on a second thing at the same time.

We'll see.

So, going with my new idea for a story, I've started looking at re-theming my game's cards. The premise of the game before was wizards building defenses for a town, so the cards included stuff like magical crystals that projected barriers around the town, and huge summoned monsters that would stomp the invaders flat. But with the new theme (wizards crafting magic equipment), those types of cards don't make sense anymore.

Mystic Tiger Games is happy to announce that it is working with graphic designer Justin Lynch from Swarm of Dice, LLC to help improve the appearance of Manaforge. Justin brings his experience from doing graphic design on his company's upcoming game, Loot & Recruit, as well as providing the design work for his company's website and branding.

Check out his work on the Swarm of Dice, LLC website (www.swarmofdice.com) and his portfolio page (www.justinlynchdesign.com).

Welcome Justin! Here's to making Manaforge look awesome!

I think I might have a working idea for a story.

January, 2013

Now that I think about it, I really have been playing board games my whole life, more or less. My dad introduced me to all kinda of games when I was little. Chess, checkers, backgammon, cribbage, 5 card draw poker, Klondike solitaire, blackjack, Parcheesi, Monopoly, Risk, Mille Bornes, Scrabble, Yahtzee...  and probably a dozen more I'm not thinking of. He often liked to complain (in a good way) that as I got older, he had a harder time winning against me.

Growing up, my friends introduced me to more new games. Magic: the Gathering, Talisman, Nuclear War, Illuminati, HeroQuest, Magic Realms, Hacker, Give Me the Brain!, The Great Dalmuti, Cosmic Encounter, and so on.

So I guess it makes sense that I'd end up building my own someday.

I lost interest in board games temporarily when I moved away to go to college. But a few years ago, some friends got me back into it. And I realized what I had been missing. The games had gotten a lot more varied, a lot more complex, and a lot higher quality since I had been 'away'. New ways to play, new challenges. I was hooked again.

I was just coming down off of a wonderfully long holiday vacation. (Not often I get two weeks off in a row.)  I had spent a good chunk of that time doing chores around the house, stuff that I'd been putting off for too long. Some of that work went to cleaning out old junk. One piece of old stuff in particular was a notebook from one of my grade school classes. On the inside cover, I noticed a doodle I had drawn long ago, a four square pattern of red-yellow-green-blue with various symbols in each square. I didn't think much of it at the time, just put it away and kept cleaning.

It wasn't until a couple of week later that the inspiration hit me. And I mean the word "hit" pseudo-literally. Not that an actual object collided with me, but that's about what it felt like; there was an audible 'thump' as my own personal muse decided to slap me on the back of the head and say "make this, stupid". I had been playing a lot of the board game Seasons then, so the idea that came to me was similar to that, though different in many respects. And that idea wanted out. Felt like my brain was going to explode with all the possibilities; I had to get the idea fixed in some sort of medium before it decided to dig its way out of my head and run off on its own.

What followed was a flurry of prototype component purchasing. Note card paper. Label paper. Circle punches. Plastic chips. Colored markers. Card sleeves. And dice, lots of dice. Numbered dice. Blank dice. Colored dice. Six sided, eight sided, ten sided.

My first card prototypes were made using GIMP. Printed, cut out with scissors, sleeved with old game cards. Simple things, really; large colored dots in the middle (benefit), small colored dots at the top (cost), and text at the top with really imaginative names like 'red' and 'double red'.

My first dice were blanks with tiny rectangular sticky labels with colored dots drawn on them. Each player started with a pool of 6 six-sided dice, and chose four to roll at the beginning of their turn. Kind of Yahtzee style, where you had a number of 'rerolls' before you were stuck with what you rolled. A player used the rolled dots to 'buy' one or more cards, and cards went onto the player's board to give more dots on future turns. A player could also 'upgrade' the dice, exchanging a six-sided for an eight-sided, or an eight-sided for ten-sided; the 'extra' sides on the dice had special bonus powers.

The cards were arranged on a 'treadmill'. Old, unpurchased cards got cycled off one end while new cards came in on the other. The cards all had point values on them; simply add up your cards at the end of the game to see who won.

I managed to get some friends to play this first prototype. The game was clunky, no question. Expensive cards would appear at the beginning of the game, when nobody could buy them. Some cards were worthless, others too strong. Some of the dice powers were worthless. (One die had an additional reroll power; I lost count of the number of times someone would reroll and get the same side again.)

But even in those initial playtests, the spark was there. Somewhere, buried underneath all of the confusion, was a tiny kernel of fun. That people wanted to play again (after lots of fixes, of course), said that the game had potential.

Fix. Test. Fix. Test. Fix. Test.

Amidst the fixes, I determined that the game needed a theme. Looking for inspiration, I remembered that old school notebook. The red square had a depiction of a flexed arm (muscle). The yellow one had a lightning bolt (power). Green had a four-leaf clover (luck). Blue had a book (knowledge). I juggled those concepts around until I came up with the four 'currencies' (work, money, influence, knowledge), applied a business-ish theme to the game, gave names to the cards, and gave each player a 'character' that corresponded to a color.

And Facets was born. :)

While working on Manaforge, I've had one recurring problem: the game's story.

Mechanically, the development process has been relatively straightforward. Sure, the game has gone through many iterations. I've added new ideas, stripped out and/or replaced mechanics, added rules, patched up corner cases, corrected most of the balance issues (there are still some, but they get less severe with each iteration), playtested, rinse, repeat...  you get the idea.

But for some reason, the overall story behind the game has been hard to pin down.

When the game was first created, it had no theme at all. It was an abstract game about rolling dice to obtain colored 'dots', which were spent on cards that gave more dots. Dice had colors too, and each die typically gave more dots of its own color. Each card had a point value; at the end of the game, you tallied up the point values of your cards. For a first iteration, this worked just fine.

When the time came to start working a theme into the game, I decided on a theme about four gentlemen, with wildly different occupations, trying to settle an argument about who was best at their job. Each type of 'dot' became a 'currency' of sorts; red, yellow, green, and blue translated into Hard Work, Money, Influence, and Knowledge, respectively. The four players had the same colors, so the player's occupations became Construction Worker, Investment Banker, Celebrity Gambler, and University Professor, respectively. Cards in the game had names like 'Build a Skyscraper', 'Venture Capital', 'Tournament Win', and 'Scientific Breakthrough'.

The game was named 'Facets', both a play on the 'different facets of life' of each character, and a reference to the sides of the dice.

I thought it was a clever idea, but nobody that played the game really 'got' the theme. Quite possibly because the game didn't have any art at that point (just colored dots), but the connection was there if you looked. Apparently nobody else saw it the same way.

So, going on the idea of 'do what you know', I rethemed the game to be high fantasy, my favorite genre. (Also one of the most overused ones. Oh well.)

The colored dots became 'mana'. The four colors became the four elements. (When I tell a player that the 'fire' die has no sides that give 'water' mana, the understanding is pretty much immediate.) The cards that the players are purchasing are now 'spells'; you're using your mana to cast the spell. Spells create objects or call up magical effects. Spells in play become 'artifacts' or 'equipment', spells with only an instantaneous effect are 'sorceries' or 'evocations'. Dice represent the 'aether', the unstable flow of ambient magical energy around the wizards; rolling the dice shows the player what types of mana they can isolate and harness at that point in time. The game's three decks of cards became 'morning', 'afternoon', and 'evening', designating that the events of the game take place over a single day. 'Coins' (tokens that represented dots that could be carried over between turns) became 'mana crystals', magical batteries that keep mana contained until it is needed. (Unconstrained mana tends to dissipate if not used.) 'Goal' cards that gave player-specific special sources of victory points became 'character' cards, showing what types of magic your wizard specializes in.

All well and good, the game's mechanics fit reasonably well with the theme. The problem is the story. Why are the characters doing this?

The current story is that the players are defending a city from invading monsters. The player that creates the best defense wins a prize. Problem is, that doesn't really convey the feel of the game.

Just telling the players that they're defending a city makes it sound like they're defending it together. No, it's a contest. But by that point I've already made the wrong first impression. The game is competitive, not cooperative.

Telling the players that they're crafting equipment and defenses sounds too behind-the-scenes for the likes of such mighty wizards. They should be on the front lines, fireballing and lightning-bolting those monsters into the next lifetime.

Also, the game is about building an economic engine; what's so heroic about sitting in your workshop and cobbling together a staff that can increase your lightning power when there is a target-rich environment right outside your door?

I'm reluctant to part with the story I've crafted so far. I know it doesn't fit well, and I'm assuming I will have to change it at some point, but I don't want to replace it until I'm certain that the new story is the right one. To make matters worse, I'm also fighting comparisons to the board game Seasons, which while that game is mechanically different from mine, thematically it is very similar. I want to make certain my game distinct.

I don't have the answer to this question. Yet. I'm hoping enough playtests will make the answer obvious.

Hello there! My name is Bryan Kline, and I'm the owner and manager of Mystic Tiger Games, LLC.