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Erin Hao
Description
Players as appraisers from a museum who are responsible for restoring artifacts for an upcoming museum exhibition. They have limited time collect their artifacts and acquire tools, and the one best at their job will be honored by the museum.
Design Process
Design Challenges
Iteration:
The Game went through roughly 3 major iterations before the landing on the current version (4th). Some examples of iterations:
Version 1
Feedback
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Limited material packs, causing shortages (Dust, Ink, Scissors).
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Imbalanced material demand in storage.
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Some artifacts need too many rare materials (e.g., Snake Goddess: 7 pieces).
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“Free Trade Time” prolongs the game.
Adjustment
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Limited material packs, causing shortages (Dust, Ink, Scissors).
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Imbalanced material demand in storage.
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Some artifacts need too many rare materials (e.g., Snake Goddess: 7 pieces).
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“Free Trade Time” prolongs the game.
Version 2
Feedback
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Lack of motivation to choose hard restorations; not enough movements to restore artifacts in 8 rounds.
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Tracking 3 movements/round is difficult.
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Lack of interaction without free trade.
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Unbalanced personal skills accumulate over rounds.
Adjustment
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Unify restoration requirements: All artifacts need 4 pieces; players draw 3 random artifacts before the game.
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Reduce material types from 8 to 5 (brush, paint, thread, cohesive, scissors).
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Cancel movement points; use a set procedural flow: draw skill cards, choose material, trade from the public market, exchange for artifact pieces.
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Change personal skills into skill cards to encourage interaction.
Art Challenges
Card Base - style and color:
The artifacts pieces are in a wide variety of colors and shapes, it is hard to unify a border/decoration style that fits with all. I intended to highlight the artifact pieces and tool information on the cards, so the card base has to be neutral and light, but still contributes to the historical theme.
Artifact Pieces:
Available photographs of the Artifacts are all lit differently, so editing and unifying a similar white balance and flattening certain unwanted shadows was important. The core gameplay also required a set of misleading choices to confuse players, and I disguised these pieces in various ways, including but not limited to: rotating, mirroring, distorting, color curve edit, erasing elements, repetition etc.
A correct set:
Misleading choices:
Ordering Pieces:
Board games are physical, so material and quality matters. I have a lot of complex shapes and irregular edges for my artifact pieces, so I had to be inventive when looking for custom manufacturers. I tried to look at customary price tag labels, stickers, bookmarks, wooden jigsaw, coins, tokens. In the end, I decided to have the artifact pieces plastic sealed , and material tokens to be thick cardboard because of their light weight, durability, visibility, and space-saving quality.
Reflect & Learn
What went right?
I tested the entire gameplay process enough to achieve a fairly balanced game. Although some tests are just me pretending to play from 4 different perspectives, I was able to collect feedback from the small group playtests I held with my friends and family. The preparing art assets took a long time, but the results were promising.
What next?
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Looking back, my choices in card base and decoration were satisfactory. I would prioritize redesigning the card borders if I have the chance.
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The green accent color coincidentally resembles a blackboard, which doesn't exactly fit the theme of conservation and museum environment.
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I would group the values for the card base, and the border could be lower contrast.
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I would also edit some of the artifact pieces to be a little more obvious, to adjust the difficulty.
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The props (the plate and bamboo mat) are added to the set after the card designs, so the value and colors are too deep, meaning that the whole visual scheme isn't ideal. There are probably better choices.
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