Ancient Games at the British Museum
More Board game examples
Making a Board in Photoshop
First you need to answer these questions.
- What shape should it be?
- What size does it need to be?
- What size piece of paper do you want to print it on?
- Does the board fold? How many times?
Next open Photoshop and set-up your work area. You need to know the outside dimensions for the entire board even if it folds. * You should use 300dpi as the resolution. If you find you have a hard time finding images that are big enough, this can be cut back to 180dpi.
Work in inches(or cm) and pay attention to the size of the spaces/grid you are creating. The Real Game of Life did a terrible job of this. The space should be big enough to hold the amount of pieces that can land there. (if a rule says a piece can not land on a square with a piece already on it, the space could be just a little bigger then the biggest piece. (Monopoly has different size pieces). I usually create a layer that contains a shape that is the size of my biggest piece. I then use this as a visual reference when creating my game board.
Consider how the theme is represented by the graphics and images and by the way players navigate the game board. How does the experience of playing the game involve the theme? How does the design teach the players how to play the game?
Try lots of different ideas. Change the shape of the spaces. Make multiple versions of the pathways on the board. When you get an idea you like try making another version that is the exact opposite of the idea. This part is about experimentation. Share what you are doing with other people to get their reaction. maybe they like the opposite version better for good reasons. This is not about our egos it is about communicating through visual language to the general public (and thus making money).
When you land on a great idea with thoughtful design we need to make a prototype. If your game board folds you will need to break up your photoshop file into different pieces. Save your working file (PSD) and then flatten each layer seperatly and save each out as a jpeg using "Save for Web(Legacy)" found under "Export".
Games you should know how to play
23) No Thanks - game rules
24) Exploding Kittens - game rules
26) Nuclear War Card Game - game rules
27) Illuminati (by Steve Jackson Games) - game rules
27) King of Tokyo - game rules
25) Hive - game rules
No comments:
Post a Comment