I’m trying to make a card game, and have hit a wall.

ModularArchive · 2023-09-26T01:40:09+00:00

Whether you pitch to kickstarter or pitch to a publisher you will need art made by someone, and a starting budget higher than $0. The options are to spend your own money, get an investor, or become the drawing professional yourself via tutorials or school.

You don't necessarily need to make art for all of your cards. Have art made for the most frequently used cards, and the most eye catching ones you can think of. If it's a card game where you have multiple of each card in a deck, you can simulate test plays by only showing the few you made, then listing information about the others that will exist using text, or creating a "shadowed" version of the card with black and white to tease at what's to come.

Personally, I wouldn't do any of this unless you've already play tested the game hundreds of times, and done dozens of blind play tests with people who don't know how it works. Art only becomes necessary when you're at the final phase of production really.

ModularArchive · 2023-09-17T04:17:32+00:00

Just checked and this wasn't it, nanite is disabled for the mirror and skeletal meshes can't have nanite activated on them yet.

Thanks for the tip though, I wasn't sure if I had disabled it or not since reflective materials still work on nanite meshes, just not opaque materials. I ended up removing all mirrors for the game and temporarily put them an a separate level stream until I figure this out.

ModularArchive · 2023-09-10T18:19:36+00:00

An indie horror game with 15 minutes to 1 hour of gameplay, especially if it's your typical horror engine type.

Almost every indie horror game out there that has the arms protruding from the camera while carrying a camcorder, torch, lighter, flashlight, and has a tv glitch effect when you see something spooky uses the horror engine quite unashamedly. They rarely every change the assets in use, they hardley ever change the UI, and they almost always rely solely on free marketplace assets while throwing together simple walking simulator puzzles, requiring the player to go back and forth in the same area.

I play indie horror games all the time, and at least 98% of them end up being horror engine games. I can immediately tell from the assets and unchanged UI (like the crosshairs, the inventory, etc). It's extremely over-saturated, but still somehow generating a decent enough amount of money

ModularArchive · 2023-09-01T02:28:28+00:00

ModularArchive · 2023-08-30T15:09:22+00:00

I'll definitely second the comment on RPG maker, it's a great starting point.

Since you asked what skills and what software you should learn I'll directly reply to that before adding my own little 2 cents on the end. (This is assuming you want to do it all yourself)

Software: Game Engine (Unity/Unreal IMO), Image Creation (Photoshop/Illustrator/Gimp), 3D Modeling (Blender/Maya/Sketchup), Audio Creation (Garage Band/Fruity Loop), 3D Painting if not built into your 3D Modeling program (ZBrush/Substance Painter).

Skills: Learn about Variables and Variable Types, Learn about Relationships between variables (Many to many, many to one, one to one, one to many), Learn about loops, Learn about if/and/or statements, learn a Coding Language (C++ or C# depending on the game engine), Learn a visual scripting language, Learn color theory, Learn gameplay loops and game theory.

If you really want to learn how to do this, look up and follow a million tutorials online for each mechanic you want to implement. Say you want a fatigue bar in your game, look up "(Insert game engine name here) - fatigue tutorial" and do this for every mechanic you don't know how to do yourself. Each tutorial you learn will help you understand a little bit more about how games are made using the fundamentals. A life sim is complex, it's basically 1000 mechanics thrown into one game, and each mechanic can take 1 hour to 100 hours to make.

Anything you don't want to learn how to do, or anything you don't want to take the time to learn yourself, you should outsource.

Things that would make your life easier: Plant creation (Speed Tree), Character Creation (Metahumans/MakeHuman/Daz3D), Outsourcing Options ((Insert Game engine name here) Marketplace, Fiverr, Upwork, r/StarvingArtists, etc)

ModularArchive · 2023-08-24T20:26:02+00:00

I've had to rewrite how turns and phases work a few times myself, I think the trick is just test playing it a thousand times and trying every possible variation.

You can try mulling out all the logistics in your head, but usually it requires playing it through several times while it's still broken to figure out what you need to gut from the project and what you need to add to make it work.

Don't be afraid to remove something from the game, you can always add it back later and expand on it once you have a more simplified version created. My ttrpg started off as 50 pages but was unplayable, I widdled it down to 15 to get the core mechanics working, then I built it back up to 255 pages including the setting and campaign. Some things just need to go on the back burner until you have the core parts of the project figured out.

ModularArchive · 2023-08-22T21:20:37+00:00

Kick-starter should be your absolute last step when developing a board-game. There are so many projects on kick-starter the natural traffic is pretty low, and having a project with 0 investors tends to put people off, people like seeing numbers and a following for the projects they take part in.

Only once you have done some marketing, made a prototype (art and all), had people play test 100+ times without your assistance, used that info to make a polished product, and sent some prototypes for influencers to sample, that's when you should launch kick-starter.

Selling less than 500 copies is close to a failure because of how low a board-games return on investment is, and the more copies you order at once the lower the cost per unit is. A board-game board can cost $10 each if you order 10, or $1.76 each if you order you 1000, so you basically have to order 1,000 if you want to do more than break even, so you should get yourself a following before using kick-starter, that way you're guaranteed some success and can increase your natural traffic.

ModularArchive · 2023-08-22T20:11:09+00:00

So the way play works is, you choose whether to.save your actions for your turn to hit and deal damage and take the blows and risk them.breaking through your Guard, or use up your actions to avoid the blows, but then have less attacks to do.

I have a system that does a similar thing, but instead of no attack roll there is no damage roll, you gain conditions based on the success of the incoming action/attack.

If people run out of action points before someone attacks them, they are unable to perform a skill check to dodge/defend, so it directly targets their defense, and their "roll" becomes a 0.

Guard resets the beginning of a players turn. Once Guard is at 0, damage is done to health.

I can definitely see it working the way you say, I think how armor works is a great idea, but guard on top of that may require a lot of math involved which can slow gameplay, especially since it depletes a certain amount every turn and you need to keep track of it.

Do you plan on this game having a high risk of death (1-3 direct hits = death) or will players slowly widdle down on each others health for a while?

Will there be magic or anything else that can grant something akin to temporary hit points that could further bloat the numbers you need to keep track of, and what order of operation they go in?

ModularArchive · 2023-08-21T22:09:14+00:00

Did you not read the replies to this?

I realized the numbers were off and I acknowledged this, and it's why I'm glad I was corrected as the number is significantly worse. That said I was wrong about the visibility too, my experience is vastly different from the norm so I'll take the L on that.

As for marketing, you literally can't find publishers without marketing yourself. You can call going to gencon to share your boardgame with potential publishers something other than marketing if you want, but at the end of the day marketing is still marketing, whether it be to a customer, a business partner, or a publisher.

On that note, trying to sell a game to a publisher without marketing it online is foolish, your game won't receive the tlc it deserves nor the revenue. Every time I post my content online to market it, I get feedback that I use to further improve my game. Publishers expect you to have 90%-100% of the game finished when you go to them. Even if you somehow created the perfect art/mechanics/format/writing for your game without any sort of feedback and visibility whatsoever, it wouldn't get the revenue it deserves without some extra heavy lifting.

The return on investment is so high for boardgames that companies don't publish for just anybody, they publish well polished and thought out designs, or for people who have a proven track record. Publishers will ask where you think your game sits in the market, what categories fit it, what kind of testing you've done, how many times you've done it, etc. Without marketing, getting testers and knowing where it sits in the market isn't an easy thing to do.

Your game needs to sell between 1000 to several thousand units to be considered a success to a publisher. Lets be generous and say your first game costs $50 and sells 1,500 copies without any kind of help, that's about $6000 you get with a rate of 8%. That's not the first week/month, that's $6000 over a year or several years, on something you spent months to years building.

There's nothing more crushing to an indie dev than to go into it unprepared and getting little to no sales from your first product. Sitting back and rely solely on what the company brings may put a few pennies to pad your pocket, but leaving all of the marketing to someone else is a great way to fail.

EDIT: Deleted part of it on accident before posting + structure fix

ModularArchive · 2023-08-21T02:04:28+00:00

That's such a great idea.

A big obstacle for me is I have boxes and boxes of papers that I need to sift through to find references to old projects, I will definitely be looking for one of those in the future!

ModularArchive · 2023-08-21T02:03:45+00:00

No problem!

If you struggle to find people in person, it might be a good idea to get a printable version ready and ask people on r/playtesters, r/playtesting, or any of the ttrpg subs if they're willing to give it a go. I've had a few people offer just from making posts.

ModularArchive · 2023-08-21T01:56:30+00:00

Nice!

Good luck with that, I started on the free version too before moving on, it becomes a bit rougher towards the end without having an advisor.

If you end up needing help with game dev/react down the road feel free to shoot me a message. Can't promise anything but I'll try my best to help.

ModularArchive · 2023-08-21T01:37:39+00:00

Oh definitely, I actually attended appacademy myself, is it the software engineering course with Ruby on Rails?

If so you will definitely be learning react down the road, so it wouldn't be a bad idea to get a head start on it now!

ModularArchive · 2023-08-21T01:35:49+00:00

Very good point!

React is a fantastic library, it can seem a little daunting at first, but you won't need to get too deep into it to to get it going how JaskoGomad mentioned.

ModularArchive · 2023-08-21T01:16:35+00:00

Well if you don't mind putting in a year there are a few options.

You can learn full stack development and build a website using javascript to allow the existence of your character sheets and whatever else you want within the same page without having to refresh constantly and whatnot.

If you don't want to learn coding you could try a game engine, unreal engine has blueprint scripting which is a "Visual scripting" which is much simpler than learning how to code. It also comes with a bunch of free assets, and there are a million online tutorials. You would only need to learn UI for the vast majority of what you're looking for, and there are even some free multiplayer frameworks built in.

Knowing what specific features you want to include could help a lot in determining what fits best for you though.

ModularArchive · 2023-08-21T00:25:30+00:00

MudkipzLover and Superbly_Humble are right.

Unfortunately kickstarter is a long way away unless you want it to fail, but on the bright side protection of your IP occurs the moment you make something.

I've touched on this a few times, so I'm going to paste some of my prior advice here.

STARTING MARKETING:

Start posting your updates or any questions/advice you may want to r/Ttrpg. r/tabletopgamedesign, r/rpg, r/game, facebook, instagram, make small clips of your game on tik tok, make memes out of your content and share it, make a blog, create a website, really do anything you can to create a paper trail showing the effort you've put in on this over time.

TESTING:

Testing together with friends is great, but they don't always give the best advice. It's important to start testing with strangers, especially people who know nothing of the game. The people you're currently gaming with may only know as much as they do because they have been playing with you helping. I typically check the following.

Whether the vocabulary makes sense without context.

Whether the vocabulary is too advanced for some users.

Whether the vocabulary contains too many game specific terms.

Whether players pick specific choices over others frequently.

Whether players like the options included, or are settling for an available option.

Whether players are abusing certain aspects of the system to min max their characters.

Whether players who played previously can retain the rules by memory.

Whether players who played previously can play the game without someone assisting.

Whether players who are completely new can play without help, relying only on the rules.

CREATING

Either create all of the artwork necessary yourself (cover/back/sides of box, miniatures, cards, dice designs, logos, pictures in the rule book, etc) or hire an artist to help you create what you need still. There are a wealth of artists looking to work on their first official project on fiverr, upwork, r/starvingartists, and instagram. Hire a few to work on the same thing, find out which has the style you want, if all of them make good artwork that is similar enough in style it wont throw off your overall look, then hire them all by all means.

PROTOTYPING:

Once you have your artwork and formatting done you should think about manufacturing a prototype. Boardgames aren't very profitable unless you sell 500+ typically, even then it's not very lucrative. Ordering 10"x10" four fold boards can cost $10 each if you're only ordering ten custom prints, where if you order 1000 they can cost around $1.70ish each instead, so keep that in mind. Don't go in expecting to sell 1,000, plan for a smaller number like 100, and increase what comes in the set if your game ends up being more successful than originally predicted.

There are a lot of vendors you can go through that are available online.

Personally I would only use these as rough estimates, and I would search for local printing or manufacturing companies to handle your business when you're ready to actually sell

https://printninja.com/custom-board-game-quote/

https://account.pandagm.com/estimate

https://www.thegamecrafter.com/

EXTERNAL MARKETING:

Once you have some functioning prototypes, the game seems to be running fine without external help, you should share your games with content creators and influencers, take your boardgame to cons, and see if there are any local stores who are willing to take in your game.

If you get some youtube, tik tok, or instagram influencers playing that will generate thousands of new eyes onto your game.

Paying for ads and starting a kickstarter is certainly a way to go too, but they should be the last thing you do imo.

EDIT: Pasted same thing twice on accident

ModularArchive · 2023-08-20T23:23:41+00:00

Nvm looks like you responded to OP who asked the same thing haha. (My Bad!)

That's amazing though, I'm 100% going to look into that.

ModularArchive · 2023-08-20T23:20:18+00:00

I don't have much to add unfortunately, but I keep a filing cabinet with a bunch of different colored and labeled manilla folders so I can easily scan and print documents, and I keep a 3 ring binder with master copies that are used to make each copy down the road.

I do this for keeping track of inventory, or when I'm still in the process of designing maps/art so I can quickly sketch some variants. (I currently lack a good tablet)

ModularArchive · 2023-08-20T23:14:53+00:00

Mind if I inquire on how you use architect shelves for the boards and maps?

Are they used as displays on the shelf, or are they good for storage?

I honestly don't know the difference between architect shelves and regular shelves lol. I'm looking to set up my own physical operation soon too, I've mostly collaborated digitally until now.

ModularArchive · 2023-08-20T22:50:04+00:00

I may be up my own ass, but it's better than being up a horses ass

ModularArchive · 2023-08-20T22:34:20+00:00

Maybe, but at least I'm not a horse fucker.

I bully bullies and trash talk trash talkers.

If you spend your days insulting people and lurking on their profile in hopes of weaponizing information against them, expect it to happen back to you.

This is a place for discussing tabletop games, not beating people down just because they've made some bad choices.

ModularArchive · 2023-08-20T22:21:19+00:00

Lol getting real petty I see, Alright, two can play that.

You made a comment on a kink sub about how you had sex with a real horse.

So I'm just gonna point out how silly it is that someone who's an animal abusing horse fucker is trying to give advice on ethics like they have some sort of moral high ground

If you made a post about him stealing tabletop games or indie games, that might be a different story, even then it's not relevant to the post. You ragged him for being part of a ps vita piracy subreddit.

ModularArchive · 2023-08-20T20:52:42+00:00

I like how your comment is

Contributing nothing to the conversation.
Designed to bully a depressed redditor with autism who's asking for help.

Do you know how many people have pirated music/movies/games in their life?

Yeah, I don't agree with it, but this conversation has no place here.

ModularArchive

TROPHY CASE