MISHMASH: Galaxy is a light strategy game of long term planning, memorisation and card management with a theme of fantasy / SF Technologies taken from all sort of popular media, be it TV shows, comics, games and movies. The game is still under development and with cooperation with stunning artists - Greg Bobrowski and Tomek Larek - taking the lead on the artworks. Designing the game itself did not end for my share of work on the project, since I was also in charge of general mood and style of the game components and the layouts for the cards and used tokens.
We are not repeating the mistakes of our previous project and right now I am ensuring that every single game piece is well checked with the audience. Using social media influence and livestreams for the work on every single visual bit for the game I was ensuring that fans of the game itself will be satisfied with the outcome. Above a set of two different looks for the tokens. Ultimate the bottom one were picked for they suit the theme of sci-fi corporation just so much better.
Another challenge was to create the names, color clues and icons for the resources used on the game cards. One of the hardest obstacle was not the clarity of iconography, but actually ensuring that people suffering from various eyesight issues will be able to play the game without effort. Testing the icons with color-blind audience proved crucial to the process, and ultimately our resource icons turned into this:
And here is the final layour for the cards, once again with the great artwork of Greg Bobrowski! The card layour changed during the development process a grand total of 14 times, not counting in the raw prototype. Plenty of consideration went into its readability, clarity and ease of use. Now our testers finally agree that the cards are clear in purpose and meaning and are a pleasure to work with!
Regular challenge with creating a board game at any step of the work is to create a clear and easy to use rulebook for the players. The ultimate goal after all is to make sure that a game will be easy to learn not by explaining it by yourself to the potential customer, but by creating a manual that explains all the game concepts and components in an accessible and clear manner. The picture above is a first page of our rulebook.
Right now the game still lacks a few key components - mainly the box and cover artwork. In addiction we are still working on a second set of cards, the Resource Cards that are the main tool of the players in the game. When the layout is already designed, the artwork is still in progress. Will surely upgrade this page project when it will be completed.
