WALLET CARD GAME
MY ROLES: GAME DESIGNER, 2D ARTIST
Team Members: Aunonna K., Lucas A., Elora V.
Antarchy is a physical, 2-4 player card game I made with a team of 2 other people. We made it over the course of 4 months. It was my first time making a card game with a team, and my first time learning about the design process for making a card game. By working on this project, I improved my skills in game design, illustration, character design, graphic design, and teamwork. I also got to practice my skills using various software such as Jira, Trello, Adobe Illustrator, and Photoshop. I had a lot of fun designing the ant characters, since I never drew ants before this, and was able to use the chance to experiment with my style and practice character design.
FINAL PRODUCT
I made this game in my first year, when I was less experienced with the development process for game design. That's why I ended up mostly contributing in this project with my 2D art, graphic design skills, and Quality Assurance; I ended up working on the game/systems design mostly from a high-level perspective. Still, I learned a lot about important things like how to manage and work with a small team, and looking back, I know now that my team and I could remake this game to be a lot better than it already is.
MY WORK
CARD ILLUSTRATIONS
Set A of the cards I made illustrations for.
Set B of the cards I made illustrations for.
Earlier concept sketches, when I was just figuring out the style we were going for. They were a lot more humanoid at this point, but that changed later due to us wanting the designs to be simpler, so they looked better at a smaller size.
Set A of the cards I made illustrations for.
I did the character illustrations, icons, and card back design, and my teammate Elora did all the background illustrations, while me and my teammate Lucas collaborated on the graphic design/layout. To make the ant designs, I first researched various ant species, and looked for references for cartoony ant characters. I mostly found 3D characters, or characters that looked a bit too realistic, so after a while of looking at the very rare comic book/webtoon ant, I began to make my own sketches in my own style. The above pictures are the final ant designs.
They were all based off of different ant species, so that they could look unique and have abilities based of their traits in the game. I recontextualized the designs with pop culture references and jokes, to make the characters stand out and be memorable for players. For example, I made the Bulldog ant based off the character from a certain assassin game due to its ability in real life, and in our game. The Honeypot ant was made to be carrying a big pot of honey, for instant understanding (and also to avoid giving it a huge behind, as the ants were more humanized in this style, and that would look odd).
On the last slide, you can see some of my concept sketches, where I was trying to figure out how I should illustrate these characters; it took me a while to come to the final designs at the time, because I wanted a balance of cuteness and "ant-ness", without making things look overly creepy.
For the icons and graphic design, I tried to keep things simple, and just focus on readability. We had various prototypes with different layouts, and it took us a while to come to a final layout decision, which was visually unique but also functional.
GAME DESIGN
For the game design part of this project, we consulted the Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design by Geoffrey Engelstein & Isaac Shalev, to decide what mechanics we wanted to include. After consulting the book and applying learnings in class, we decided to focus mostly on the above for our game.
We established at the start that we wanted to focus on Sabotage, Deck building and Competition as our main game themes. Using these, the guidance & inspiration from the book, and some example wallet games, such as Seasons of Rice, we brainstormed ideas for our game on the whiteboard and during meetings. We organized our cards using excel, where we tweaked the values and other card contents, before moving onto simple paper prototypes to be used for playtesting in class (unfortunately, I don't have pictures of these).
TAKEAWAYS
While it's true that my contributions to this game's creation were more focused on the art side of things, I also learned a good amount about the design process for tabletop games. Because we focused on making a physical game rather than a digital game, it challenged us to really focus on the user side of things, and test our game every step of the way. Doing this made me get more used to working in a team, talking to and hosting playtesters, and taking and giving valuable feedback.
Art wise, this project got me used to communicating with and working with a second artist. It was a bit awkward at first, but by applying my soft skills the way I learned inside and outside of class, I was able to get along with my artist teammate and learn how to coordinate our efforts for a better whole. While not the most efficient, as it was my first time, it still served as a valuable experience, and will be helpful wherever I go and need to collaborate with other people.
I also learned from observing my other teammates, doing research on card games, and playing others' games. Before this, I had no experience making my own card game, so I didn't exactly understand what made them so immersive in the first place. It was overall a very educational experience, and looking back, it was a good step towards me understanding game design better overall. I know I'll be able to use what I learned here to make better physical and digital games in the near future.
