Cutting it close! I have finished all of my art (afaik) and I decided that I actually do need to whip up a pcio version to make a proper tutorial video for the game page. So I've been working on that. I might have to skip working on card backs for that but whenever I make them for the print and play I'll port those in. I'm hoping to record an online gameplay session with my friends as well, so you guys will get to see how the game works with actual people playing.
About the physical version, I realize there might be some challenges in bringing it to life. Notably research. In the prototype research is a token, but in a physical space it would be hard to keep track of a ton of tiny little tokens, especially if you need to keep track of it to properly math out probabilities. So I'll have to figure out a cleaner way to handle that... Maybe using a paper clip or something...
As for the digital version, meBID is working hard on it. I recently received a prototype and have been providing feedback on rules questions and design stuff and bugs and whatnot. I'm mainly excited to see the story brought to life via the endings. I might have mentioned it in a video before, but if not, the game will have multiple endings. The ending will be different depending on the character you choose, along with whether you win or lose; meaning that there will be 6 endings! And all of them are canon (for this game)! So I was pretty inspired by the arcade endings of BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger. The endings of that game are all flashbacks(?) revealing some lore about the world or the character. That's the approach I went for with the endings: On a loss, the ending will show a flashback/back story of your chosen character (from the viewpoint of a different character), while a win will show a character's future/true ending. That true ending should tie back into the main Steel Love plot and hopefully give an interesting hook for a potential book 12. For the sake of the stream, the plan is to have all the endings unlock after completing a game so you guys can see the entire story that bookends the board game experience.
So how about art then? Here's a look at some of the targets:
Not sure if you guys will notice but the dude on the right also appeared as a scrappet in my previous board game. He seems a lot nicer in this version though.
And here's the title screen, and a look at the main trio:
Oh yeah! Speaking of the title, I guess I never really explained where the name "Stardust Butterfly" came from. Honestly I was looking at random shoegaze song titles and picked words I thought were cool and ended up with that. I don't remember where "stardust" came from but "butterfly" came from "Butterfly Effect" by RAY. I also thought about how in the mythology of different cultures, butterflies are tied with souls and rebirth. So it's fitting how the crew are all essentially lost, wandering souls waiting for their "rebirth"... Something like that. Anyway, I think it's a cool title and it's fun to say so that's that.
So yeah, I've got to get back to work. Hopefully everything will come together in time! See you guys on Saturday!