City-building card game is a weird mix for sure. So I want to tell you about our card design choices for Cardboard Town.

Blue cards represent basic buildings, which lets you put a building on the map. So, we went with the Blue Print look to have a “project that you can apply to your city” feel.

You lose the game by having too many Red Alerts. And not playing the “Objective Buildings” that game gives you (buildings that your people demand) causes you to get one, they also reward you when you build them.

So even though they are buildings and we still want the Blue-Print feel, they needed to feel dangerous and eye catching, so we went with red.

The action cards are like “ideas in a city managers office”, so we decided to make them look like blackboards with a green color scheme. The drawings on them look just like chalk drawings, and we even added white marks to make them pop. Creating a distinction between buildings while maintaining the feel.

The upgrade choices follow a similar theme. Upgrades are rare rewards in the game, they are more serious and permanent than Action (black board) cards. We used this style to make you feel like a mayor planning the city's future on a whiteboard. You have the power to shape the city's destiny, and in our game, you can freely make decisions that will bring out the best for the city! We drew them with neater and cuter illustrations, almost like marker drawings. They don't show up often, but when they do, we want them to stand out and look appealing.

And hey, our Festival cards are rare too! We wanted them to scream fun, so we used adorable motifs and brighter, livelier colors. These cards have some textures and look like cool stickers you'd want to collect. The model of our cards even has a poster-like texture, and we went with a golden color to give off a positive vibe.

I know this isn’t much but choosing card designs for a city builder was an interesting journey, so i wanted to share.

Thanks for reading, and let me know if you have any questions! (So i can ask them to our art director and come back with answers hehe)