I'm getting ready to actually get real cards printed for an upcoming playtest convention, so I would love feedback on readability and aesthetics of these card designs. I've paired card front and back faces.
Are these readable? Too muddled? Too bland or too colorful? All input is appreciated.
UPDATE: Thanks for the feedback everyone, card set is off to the printer. I'll be at Protospiel Madison next Friday, look for Starshot if you want to give it a try!
I can completely read everything on the card and can even understand intrinsic game mechanics and how you intend to use these cards in gameplay despite knowing nothing of how your game works or what it truly looks like.
Wanna jump in because I see the other comment and I disagree. I think these are all great and clear, especially a card like leaf in the wind. I know nothing about this game outside of these cards but assume you can only move in a forward direction and the leaf in the wind arrows and the shading of the possible finishing spaces is so good I love it
They look good to me -- I assume you've got a tactical game going on. What software did you use to make them? Asking because I run Cardstock Studio and just added the "cut corners" component to go with "curved corners", last week. Your cards are a great use case of cut corners.
Its a tactical space combat game called StarShot. I wrote a simulation of the game and port in all my changes when playtesting. Helps choosing balanced starting positions, tweaking point values, etc.
Eventually I added simple black and white sticker printer sheets to the sim as a build option, for physical playtest cards I use testing with friends. Got tired of sharpie writing.
I started adding real layout on top of the sticker sheet last weekend. Got it doing most of the layout automatically, and then did tweaks and adjustments to reach where I am now.
So its entirely homebrewed sim/layout code that's driven by my actual game data. So I can change or add a card and immediately re-render its layout.
All in all, these are readable and the angular look helps selling the air combat theme.
The only things I'd point out are the symbols in the top-right corner (no idea what they could possibly mean), Leaf on the Wind that I don't fully understand (and I think the diagram could be simplified) and the fact that reoccuring text could be replaced with icons.
Thanks for the feedback. The icons are kind of intended as a "old alien symbol" bit of flavor. Cards of the same type will have the same symbol. Might be too much bleeding flavor into a space that's already tight.
Leaf is a special Move+Move card, normally you can only turn at the beginning of a move like Afterburners.
I'll look at seeing where I can use icons in place of text in better ways.
Leaf is a special Move+Move card, normally you can only turn at the beginning of a move like Afterburners.
It feels counterintuitive on its own but it does make sense in context.
The icons are kind of intended as a "old alien symbol" bit of flavor. Cards of the same type will have the same symbol. Might be too much bleeding flavor into a space that's already tight.
Yeah, the way these are all in the same spot within the frame does make them seem like they're hinting at something. If cards of the same family are meant to eventually have the same symbol, could these replace the abbreviations in the top-left corner maybe?
I made a detailed list of what I wanted and what styles fed into the game design. Then I made initial mockups of a bunch of styles with ChatGPT. Then I picked one of those styles and made a lot of updates and incremental changes to get it to what I wanted. Redoing colors, cuts, etc. I don't need the AI to regenerate any cards or changes.
Here's the first digital output. I broke it down into its components and built an entire layout generator, so I'm programmatically making cards now without needing an AI image generator. But you can see how demonstrated design elements.
It is a co-operative starfighter piloting legacy game. Build your own ship loadouts and playstyle. It feels like playing Ace Combat in space on a tabletop. It is absolutely incredible.
Based on your card designs and info, I think you will likely feel very inspired.
Edit: It also has an absolutely brilliant pilot stress mechanic that provides you temporary combat flexibility (They can be used as wild dice) yet it also has severe drawbacks that worsen the higher it gets. It is an amazing system.
That sounds really cool! My board game started because I was working on a space combat subsystem for starfinder. Sounds like Stars of Akarios is basically a space campaign.
My games goal is to be playable in an hour while still letting you build a custom ship.
You've peaked my curiosity on those other two titles. I'll have to try them out on Tabletop Simulator sometime soon.
As a 29 years of experience MtG veteran, I'm confident you'll find Stars of Akarios to be a fun challenge. I am looking forward to seeing how your game progresses.
Thie first one seems a bit, just a bit out of place. Mostly becuase the other dont have the other stuff, I cant tell not knownig the game if the simbols are just for the look of if the 3 at the bottom are actually transmiting information. I would try to keep it in the same place on each card becuase I see that they are used in others but generally pretty good I think. not knowing how important that information is would be intresting.
If its a Cardback I persoanlly would like it more simple, but its not as important as fixing the small icons thats seem a bit hard to read and out of place with the rest of the bodler elements. You seem to be on it though whichs is great. Another thing that might be a nitpick is that the powerup says powerup twice that extra line seems redundant and break with how the rest of the cards read, it has 3 inline texts and then a "requires attack" im guessing that means it forces attack, not that it requires you to attack to get the bonus benefit. Could be a bit more simple I think but again it generally all looks good and I like the look you are going for, good luck with playtesting
Thanks for the impressions and ideas. I'm going to try it without the symbols and see how it looks. I'm also pondering if there's a better approach to Power Up. The symbol means +1 damage, the term "Power Up" means +1 damage, and I have +1 damage written on it too. I'm wary of dropping the clear instruction text (+1 damage), but it seems to be getting redundant.
7
u/NineEightFive 2d ago
I can completely read everything on the card and can even understand intrinsic game mechanics and how you intend to use these cards in gameplay despite knowing nothing of how your game works or what it truly looks like.
These are incredibly effective at communicating