MATURING THE STAT CARDS

2/7/2021

This blog post is about the stat card for the Ankylosaurus, the interesting aspects of teaching ourselves to use Publisher, the maturing of the game and also the intriguing changes that come our way during development.

Ultimately it's a story of hard work and the fruits of those labours.

Anyone who has ever tried to tidy a busy room knows that it never quite goes as planned: as you walk around the room picking up clothes, you decide you need to take them to the basket, as you do you pick up some wires and some books, and before you know it...you're not just tidying, you're rearranging. This is the nature of the Cretacea re-draft.

It's not a complaint or even a joke of sorts, it's a pragmatic evaluation of the lengthy and in-depth process we've experienced so far to gett the game up to scratch.

The original plan was to polish the original for a re-release but as we went into it we found out we could do so much better than that, and so before we knew it the whole bedroom floor was covered in clutter, waiting to be neatly slotted back into a new place.

STAT CARDS V1

The stat cards in the original book were functional and basic. Arthur did the formatting in word with text boxes and shapes and it served the purpose. Sadly, on consideration we decided they needed to go entirely.

Most of the stats stayed as we knew we needed a jumping-off point for the re-write but we scrapped the design. We'll be including fluff information as in original Cretacea but the colouring, style, and format is gone.

STAT CARDS V2

When the first game was shown to people at conventions and shows, they would often ask what we programme we used to format the ruleset. When Arthur told them Word (it still largely is -- don't break what ain't broken) they people would often ask why we didn't use Publisher. Keeping this in mind we gave it a go, and found it to be great!

Publisher is basically a really basic Adobe-like programme that allows us to arrange things in a neat order. We quickly came up with a cleaner layout: adding attack values and condensing the main info for basic stats in one place. It was a great move.

We really wanted to use Scott Harmon's dinosaur skeleton images but upon contacting him we found it to be out of our budget (being a young company). Instead we decided to keep them on the cards for now as we aren't selling this and it's just for home use, and then change it later.

STAT CARDS V3

A few weeks later we re-assessed the cards taking into account some new ideas and some new game changes. Not a lot seems different here but we added "sneak/move/ run" distances in the move section and shifted the attacks section.

We're a two-man team and neither of us are designers, but we try our best. We knew it still looked a bit boring but it was still a vast improvement over version 1. We also considered making a "back" for each card with the specials explained but since we encourage players to use "pips" on the hide areas we thought that would be too inconvenient.

STAT CARDS V4

We were so please about this update! Our current company joke/ motivational message that we hum like a mantra while working is "incremental change": a healthy and digestible attitude of letting small improvements accumulate.

The grids remain but we broke them up a little more and moved them about. We also had a brilliant moment when we decided to add a coloured dinosaur drawing of our own design behind a coloured box grid.

This lets players indicate a hide area is "broken" by putting a pip on that area. It also adds some colour to the card for aesthetic appeal. Lastly, we changed some stats to rebalance the dinosaurs.

Teaching ourselves how to make our own "backgroundless PNG's" was a fascinating learning experience. These updates has bought us so many new skills and we are loving it. Growth for us and the company!

STAT CARDS V5

Lots of change! Firstly, more balancing Secondly, we had a big shock when we did a research day and found ankylosaurus to be considerably smaller than we thought. This affects its points value (yet to be ammended on this working version), health points and perhaps soon other areas.

One interesting change is the addition of the large "alertness" area, as altertness is a large part of the game. The colouring is very different here (ignore the pips not matching the hide section), the new background is much better and we've simplified the process for choosing environmental adaptation, which can now be written at the top of the card.

We also sourced some great images (this one is from Pixabay) and now each card has a fancy picture showing off the dinosaur in question.

THE FUTURE OF OUR STAT CARDS AND THEIR USES?

As we work on the game we develop more and more uses for the cards, more ideas, and polishing. We're sure they'll change once or twice more, we'd be shocked if they didn't, but are glad that they're becoming more user friendly.

Every change adds value of the game and make play for fluid. Keeps your eyes on the blog for more details and feel free to ask any questions you have below. Until then, it's bed time, because we've been working on stat cards for a long time today.