itch.io

The narrative took me a bit longer than I expected. For starters, I had to actually build up the world and premise of this Adventures in Atlas manga, then actually write dialogue for cutscenes without getting too expository about the world. But I think I got it, and I came up with a pretty good secret ending imo

This past week I also got a bit of voice acting in. Half of the characters are accounted for so far, just need to get lines in for two more, then the judges. Not bad

Speaking of judges, I also made card templates for all the cards. I just need to make art for the judge cards; but these names were very fun to make up. I did my best to make the names fit their rules:

So yeah, now I'm starting to get into full art mode. I've been sketching these characters trying to find different poses that still capture the exact charm of those first sketches, but there's always something a little off about it, so I just went ahead and colored those first sketches. There's still one more major character to draw, then I'll have to make 24 judges, and then I'll try again to figure out cutscene poses for these two

This year, the board game I'm making is all about words (Warning! I make some really bad illegal plays):

You play as a student in a magic school taking their final exams. In the game, you will be creating words out of letter cards, but there are judges with different rules you have to follow in your wordsmithing. Each of the two characters have different ways of manipulating letters to help them make words, but if a particular judge is giving you trouble, you can always punch them.

The gameplay seems pretty good, I think. It's just a matter of making sure the difficulty isn't too tough. I think the challenge with the digital version will be with the game determining what words are acceptable, specifically with the theme judges

This year I'm going to add more of a narrative than I've done recently. There won't be a robust, sprawling story though, just hopefully a cutscene at the beginning and end to flesh out the personality of the characters a bit more. I'm hoping we can get a proper tutorial level in there

I'm sticking with just one character this year, and since they're all mostly interchangeable in this context, I went with redesigning König here. I'm sure one of the beefier guys would be funnier in this context, but Koenig has been the most fun for me to draw. I'm making him a silent protagonist type (think Link from LoZ), complete with his own little fairy companion, which I'm hoping would still be pretty humorous in game. And because I love seeing more characters with unique abilities, I have another protagonist of the game, a local named Reyna. She's here to show off how the world/game is supposed to function, more or less.

This week, I'm filling out the narrative and giving my voice actors stuff to work with, and probably start up the art proper. I might test the prototype a bit more here or there, but while I think the game might be a smidge too difficult still, it'll take much more time to sand that corner a bit. Hopefully MeBID can get a digital version working soon so I can get that into playtesting 

Thank you so much! 

The online pcio version is a little messy right now, so it might be difficult to know what all the pieces are for. I'm working on getting a printable version out before the post-mortems so I won't have time to organize it before the weekend, so if you do get to try it out, feel free to ask me if you have any questions!

Yes they did a really great job. That track is my favorite too (it's meant to be for the results screen at the end of a game)

Yes, that was the vibe I was going for! The original Skremplet IP was targeted to kids, I believe, so I wanted to stay within that demographic, even down to the basic gameplay (roll die, move, sometimes draw a card)

Specifically the vibe I was going for was going from Animal Crossing (the Boyhowdy game) to Splatoon (the Skremplet game)

We managed to update the game to showcase more of the music and voice acting, and yes your assumption is correct! The Skremplets are supposed to take over the board and play their own game (while Boyhowdy is still simply moving around reading facts)

I’ve set up a pcio room for anyone who wants to check out what that version looks like (it’s kind of messy though). Just be aware that the room is public, so I don’t recommend using it to play with friends.

Hey everyone. It looks like the digital version of our game isn’t going to be finished by the deadline. However, I still want to share all the work that has been done, and I don’t mind losing points in judging over it, so I’m submitting what we have anyway. At the very least, the playingcards.io version (a free tabletop simulator website) is available to play as long as you have 2-3 friends to join you, but it doesn’t count as a video game. 

We’ll still be working to get the digital version running by stream time, because even though there is the art show and the post-mortems to share this kind of stuff, there’s a lot of collab work that would be difficult to show off in that format (talkin’ bout voice acting and music)

Though I should mention that there is a playable digital game on the page, it's just that the game is Animals in the Forest: A Trivia Board Game with Boyhowdy, and not Skremplet Scramble! unfortunately...

Alright, another board game!

I've made a lot of progress in the past two weeks:
- I created the main board game design and developed a roster of 7 different playable characters
- I was able to get a decent amount of playtesting in
- I was able to recruit a lot of help this year, from an additional programmer (monodlee) to support MeBID, to voice actors and a musician! Yay there'll be music again this year!
- I wrote out voice lines for all the characters and managed to work on some concept art

So with that said, here's a video showing off how to play (an earlier version of the prototype) and all the characters (just their mechanics though)!

THE IDEA

For the basic game rules, I took a little inspiration from Mario Party and a lot of inspiration from a digital board game called 100% Orange Juice (which I haven't played; it's been sitting in my steam library ever since it was Free that one time, but after looking into it a ton, it sounds like a lot of fun). The inspiration for the extreme asymmetry of the characters came from a board game called Spooktacular, where the 20 different characters interact with the simple mechanics of the game in very unique ways.

Coming up with character abilities that stretched what it meant to "play the game" wasn't too difficult first. The real difficulty came from how I figured out how to apply a major game jam rule into the gameplay. Each skremplet is able to "level up" during a game, trading their cool movement ability for a completely different ability or a big one-time effect. I ended up pairing off a few character concepts together to make it work. For example, the card player character I mentioned earlier throws the cards away when she levels up and goes back to dice like everyone else... except she rolls a d20 instead of a d6. That d20 ability was originally a separate character concept.

THE CHARACTERS

Well, enough of that. It's time to share some concept art of the characters. This year, I only managed to figure out abilities to 3 of the 8 characters (technically 4 of the 9). However, I felt like this game needed a bigger roster (my original aim was 10), so I'm adding 3 original characters to the mix:

Aggavick
Endowment: His body is split into four functioning parts
Detriment: Easily distracted

Stiklikittle
Endowment: Can control the fate of the universe
Detriment: Cannot handle stress very well

Geebs
Endowment: Turns sweat into money
Detriment: Extremely lazy

And here's the concept art!

WHAT'S NEXT

So this week is mostly going to be visuals. I'll be working on all the character art and the board. Then comes figuring out the cards and the graphic design/UI for the digital version. Then I'll be doing some voice acting myself, maybe next week, and I'll have to pick up a few sound effects as well.

I don't expect to post more progress here, main because it takes so much extra work to put together. But I do like having something in this community section, since the discord threads go away eventually. 

Anyway, back to work (should be sleep honestly)!

Fyi, the printable version is live! I also took the opportunity to adjust some effects for clarity

Yeah, The Pitmaster and Glerry are my favorites as well! 

I'm not sure if I can sell a physical version, but I try to make the printable versions as easy to put together as possible. Once I finish that up and release it, and you decide to print it out, let me know if you have any questions on how to put it together and I'll be happy to help!

If you want to play with friends online, I just uploaded a .pcio mod. I also recorded a quick tutorial video on the game page for how to set that up and how to play that version of the game!

Whew, and now to finish up the printable version. Should be a few more days for that.

We pushed out a small patch to the game. Certain boss and event effects should now be working as intended, and there have been little updates to the UI to make things easier to understand.

Edit:
After watching wujak's stream, we fixed up a few more effects working incorrectly and adjusted the AI a little bit

Yeah the voice acting was really fun to put together (although writing all the lines took me longer than I expected)! Ickity in particular sent in a lot of really fun outtakes: there were so many good "om nom" takes for his Bubby. I wish I were able to get some music in as well, but overall I'm very pleased with how it went

There may be a few things that aren't working correctly but as far as I can tell there is nothing game-breaking. Definitely let us know if something doesn't work though!

I'm going to put together a .pcio version (for playing with friends online) and a printable version out within a week, for those who want to try playing that way 

Ya know what, I can share the concept arts I've doodled for the employees at least:

They're not completely done yet. I still need to figure out what their uniforms will look like, but once I got that base it shouldn't be too much trouble to finish them up. Not looking forward to drawing Vee and Bubby at different angles but I'm sure I'll manage

I probably won't share what I've got for the bosses. It'll be more fun to drop those when they're finished, I think.

It's already past the middle of the third(?) week so I've already kind of transitioned into the next phase, but heavy playtesting week is done! I've locked in the effects and numbers and stuff and am directing my focus on graphic design! I don't really have much to show right now... I suppose I could share some of the doodles/concept art I made for all the characters but I wanted this to be a quick check-in on my progress, so maybe I'll share the finished art whenever I do that

But yeah, MeBID has already started on the digital version and the plan is to have actual AI attempt to simulate the other players. The actual solo mode where you play as all the employees will also be in the game, but we figured that playing as just one employee would be easier to for onboarding

Another thing about the digital version is the presentation. I really like how all the music and voice acting really brought our game last year (QQ Step) to life, so I'm hoping to do that again this year. There are twice as many characters this time, so I'm bringing in some additional help for voice acting. Not entirely sure who everyone will be voicing yet, but I've enlisted the help of Ickity Ackity Oop, cats_plz, and LegallyBoopy. 

I haven't found anyone to do music yet, but if it comes down to it, I might try it myself (maybe. I wonder if all the voices going off would be good enough). But if I do, I was thinking of making music using this little flash game that I used quite a bit maybe 15 years ago called Punk-o-Matic 2. Not sure about anyone else, but that would be super nostalgic for me... But yeah, I haven't decided yet. We'll see how things progress... This transition period from game design to visual design is always the hardest and I'm writing to make myself feel like I'm making progress even though I'm kinda slacking off

Anyway, I'll check back in once I have a logo and some art! Maybe next week or so

I think I'm settling in on Grill Marks as the title.

Anyway, I recorded a solo playthrough of the prototype:

Hello, time to make another board game!

Project Grill Marks is a cooperative board game where you play as a team of employees frantically building up resources, then using those to fulfill orders. I've got a prototype you can try out. Check out the tutorial below:

If you'd like to see how it plays, I'm going to record a solo playthrough (and if I can, I'll try other player counts too) sometime later this week.

If you don't want to watch the video (it's like 45min, so I understand), the gameplay is pretty simple. You simply must survive 5 rounds of play in order to win. 
Each player uses one employee's 8-card deck (mix decks together when there are less than 4 players). Each round has 2 phases: Prep and Service. In the Prep phase, players take turns drawing a card from their decks and playing them onto one of the stations; except they only have 2 minutes to do so. Afterwards, in the Service phase, the values on the cards are added up (taking into account any card effects) and that total is how many of that ingredient can be used to fulfill orders. Then with any profit that is made, the players can buy a single Upgrade. And that's about it. There are a few twists: there are different Bosses that change up the game, they have requirements that need to be met and if they aren't, the players lose. Also, starting with the 2nd round, Events will mess with the players as well. And on top of that is how the Employee cards all interact with each other.

You can check out the prototype rulebook here (although at this point I still need to list out all the different effects):
Project Grill Marks Rulebook (prototype) - Google Docs
(The download for the prototype is in the rulebook)

So yeah, going into this jam and seeing the theme, my gut instinct was to make a cooperative game where the players work together to "defeat" the villain mascot character. Since I prefer creating games that are generally about small-scale, non-violent conflict, I decided that this "boss battler" could has the "Boss" be your literal boss. Gameplay wise, I wanted to make a card game that captured the frantic chaos of the video game Overcooked. One of the challenges I put on myself this year was allowing the game to scale at different player counts (past years, the player count was locked to a single number). Mechanically, I was inspired by real-time games like Dutch Blitz, but specifically there's this board game (that honestly I've never played) called "7-Card Slugfest."

Anywho, I'm about out of time for this post (got a baby to feed!). This week I'm focusing on playtesting and I'll start working on art and thinking of story. With the basic game design about finished (aside from stat and effect adjustments from playtesting), I can get MeBID started on programming as well. I'm going to need to find some new team members as well, particularly for music. It would be nice to have a song or two to count as the game timer (plus I really like how last year's game came together)

See you next time!

Updated to v1.2.3! Maybe this will actually be the final time I clean up the rulebook and adjust wording for clarity. Anyway, here's the changelog:

- Adjusted rank points (S-Rank is changed to 130pts from 140pts). This is the only real gameplay change, btw. I remember during development all those years ago having S-Rank being 120pts (which was too low) and really wanting an even number (I hit a rare 140pts and was like "oh yeah it's possible I'm adjusting it"). I don't know why I cared about the even number part. Anyway, with this adjustment, hitting S-Rank will definitely be less about lucking into the right combination of cards, and will make some of those Achievements actually possible

- Adjusted wording on cards for grammar and clarity (Specifically the following cards: Mindy's Photo/Ability card, Both of Griswald's Knees, the Special card backs, and the following Events: Big Sister, Stray Cat Distraction, and Unexpected Holiday).

- Adjusted wording in the rulebook for grammar and clarity.

And that is that! I still may revisit this in the future, but only to update the tutorial video

Ever since I recorded that line, I've been saying it every time I stop at a red light. 

For those who are interested, I just uploaded the files for the printable version!

Yeah, chvage did a really great job with the music! I can't decide whether Solveig's or the Champ's theme is my favorite.

You can check out a demo room of the pcio version here!

MeBID will be posting the digital version soon! I submitted now so I can get some sleep, but there is the pcio version of the game available. You can check out the demo room here, but I recommend creating your own room if you want to play a full game with someone on there.

I'll have files for the printable version of the game finished and uploaded later this week (I hope)!

Been a while since I opened up this topic. Even in the Discord, I've been pretty quiet about the progress over here.  Most of that is because it's pretty tough balancing working on this and taking care of a baby (I'm writing this as baby sleeps on my chest at 2 in the morning and I don't want to wake her even though I'm behind on art). Heh, I guess it was very ambitious of me to think I could animate 16 characters. About a week ago, I decided to cut down and only draw a single sprite for each character, and the "animation" will be done in-engine by squashing and rotating these images. I'm still working on digitizing these sketches I've done (15/16 characters sketched as of this post), but I do have a single character finished and ready to show off:

I'm so excited to see all these guys on the dance floor. I got some pretty great poses imo, and I'm excited to show them off! I think I'll save it all for the stream, so that's the only sneak peek here. I'll probably post the other sprites after the jam is over or something.

So the current to-do list I've got planned is to finish all these poses by this weekend. I've got a few online playtesting sessions planned with friends this weekend as well, and after that I'll end playtesting so MeBID won't have to worry about adjusting things on the final stretch. 

Then for next week, I need to draw up portraits for the 4 team leaders along with the UI elements and maybe some other art like the thumbnail. I'm also planning on adding some voice acting to the game so I'll need to record that too. I'll also need to finish writing the script (which is really only for the tutorial) and possibly iron out some backstory stuff (don't think there'll be an actual story to this game). MeBID also created a little program for me to animate the sprites for whenever they port things into the game, so I'll do that as well.

So yeah, I don't know how many of you guys out there actually print out my games, but I likely won't be able to start working on that until after the deadline. And with that would come more playtesting and potential tweaking and such maybe... I'll aim for releasing a printable version a week after the deadline (maybe by the time results come out). Anyway, I gotta figure out what this 16th character is going to look like before I allow myself to sleep, so I'll get back to researching now. Good luck to everyone on their games!

Oh yeah, I also made a logo

Hello! I'm the board game guy who made Stardust Butterfly last year (which I just updated a few months ago) and Scrappet Kaiser Princess before that! I'm working again with MeBID to make another board game, called QQ Step!

Here's a little dev video showing off what I've got of the design so far:

QQ Step is a 1v1 chess-like board game, themed around teams of characters having dance battles in an underground dance club. The game itself is inspired by a board game called Onitama, and features 4 different teams/characters with unique powers. The basic gameplay involves using Dance cards to move your pawns across the board, trying to achieve one of 3 goals: Capture the enemy Leader, capture all the enemy's friends, or fulfill your personal goal. There will be 4 different playable characters: Privemal Mask, The Champ, Solveig, and DJ Dues. In the digital version, DJ Dues is planned to be an unlockable character. Each of these characters also has a unique ability.

So yeah, currently I'm working on playtesting and art. This year I'm going to try my hand at animating some sprites for the digital version (gonna make all the pawns dance, I hope), and I've got chvage working on some music. I've got to design and draw the concepts of the 16 characters that will be available here. Whew. Hope I can do it. Gonna be a little tough since I'm juggling a baby as well. This year the printable version might release well after the jam is over

Anyway, when it comes to story, I don't have much planned. Since this is a present for a teenage girl, and not a game that's carrying the weight of an already existing franchise, I think it's fine to not worry about telling an interesting story and just throwing in all the characters. But we'll see. As I draw more of these characters I might figure something out

Until next time!

Whew! I finally finished up the files for the print-and-play version, so you can now play this game in real life!

Currently waiting on a few extra things before the digital version gets uploaded. I went ahead and submitted the game just so I don't forget to later

Digital version uploaded! There is still another update on the way as we clean up a few more things

Happy gaming!

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!

It's been a week, so I should give a little update.

It's quiet here, mostly because a lot of the action is on the discord. Last year, I was also juggling doing graphic design and art for three different versions of SKP (the printable version, the online pcio version, and the digital version). While I still plan to develop a printable version, I'm putting a lot more effort on helping meBID make the digital version look good. I was also able to get BIG_FR0G's help with the artwork for the different endings, so that will look amazing. The visuals are coming along. Graphic design is almost done: there are a few more card templates I need to put together. Then comes the art for the characters, targets, and weapons. Then hopefully a nice splash art for the title screen (I'm still really happy with how well Scrappet Kaiser Princess's came out). I'm a little worried about getting all the art done, as I was just informed that I will have a lot less free time this next week than I expected, but I've been going at a good pace, and not having to worry about artwork for the endings is a huge relief. And those endings are important! I couldn't really fit the story I wanted into the gameplay or the rulebook this time, so I can't imagine what I would have done without help. I'm pretty excited for when this finally releases.

I mentioned earlier that I'm focusing mostly on the digital version for the jam. It looks like I won't have the printable version finished by the time the jam ends (I would need to make a board, character sheets, tokens, and card backs in addition to what I'm already got to do), but I'll try to get it out soon after. Not sure if I'll make a really nice pcio version like I did with SKP, since the digital version will likely have local play (and theoretically you can just share your screen because there's no hidden information), but... we'll see how I feel after I finish the printable version.

Anyway, most of the stuff I would have to show are little mockups or card templates. Not too interesting. So here's some icons I made of the three characters; a little sneak peak at the character designs I've got to figure out the colors for. Oh and also the logo. See you guys next week...? Maybe? Not sure if I'll make another post here because I might be frantically doodling, but I'll try to show off some of those drawings next time

The design is in a good spot! I made a quick (lol) explanation of the rules and did a little (lol) runthrough of how the game plays:

Hey! I made Scrappet Kaiser Princess last year (the 1p board game; I actually cleaned up and revised the rulebook a few months ago while I waited for this jam to begin, so you can check it out if you'd like). I'm designing another board game this year!

Here's a little development video explaining a little bit of the design process and basic rules, then showing off a few rounds of gameplay (tl;dw below):

So with this year's theme, none of the characters were clear picks for a board game design (unlike how Ultra Mint was last year because cards). I ended up looking into game mechanics and thinking of a tone I wanted to go for. I wanted to work with dice and the idea of action drafting was interesting to me, plus I was inspired to make something with a Cowboy Bebop vibe. To more successfully capture that idea of being in a somewhat dysfunctional crew of bounty hunters, I decided to design the game for 3 players. I'm working with meBID again this year to create a digital version of the game to be played on stream with AI opponents at least, so no worries about needing to wrangle a few extra players to play for the showcase. Basically, the game involves the players drafting from a pool of actions (fighting over who does what chores on the spaceship or whatnot) then performing those actions, and the player with the most reputation points at the end of 6 rounds will win.

Since it's a 3 player game, there are 3 different characters to choose from. Whichever of the 3 characters wins, the game will play that character's ending (sort of like an arcade mode in a fighting game). While Sumiv is technically the star of the game, the other two characters (Jebbrey and Gloz) will still have endings that tie into the original Steel Love story and will (hopefully) fit within the rules of the jam. I plan on each of these endings to be canon for the game, and none of them will contradict each other. It's essentially going to be like how Cowboy Bebop reveals the backstory of its characters, and what their future holds will have strong implications (and will hopefully inspire the author to write book 12).

Anyway, I'll leave it at that for now. I'm currently adjusting the design and tweaking numbers and abilities, so it's not much to look at atm. Hopefully I'll have a rulebook next time (week?) and I'll start doodling some characters designs, and maybe I'll even open it up for some playtesting! See you guys around!

My personal take is that would be okay. The original author might not like it too much though. But yeah at the very least my game is going to involve someone trying to build one (although I'm leaving whether they succeed or not up to the author in Book 12 if the franchise takes off again)

And here is the gameplay video! I did minimal editing so it's kinda long and I might have left in a mistake, but you get to listen to my thought process as I plan out my turns. Enjoy!

I released Scrappet Kaiser Princess v1.1! Check out the devlog I wrote here.

Basically, I added 5 new Event cards (and removed 1), added 1 new Starter card, adjusted the effects and Strength of 2 Starter cards, and the wording of 7 other cards. I plan on posting a full gameplay video of the print and play version sometime so you can see it in action, but other than that I'm calling this game finished!

Hello! It's been a while, but I've been slowly cleaning up and adjusting the game. I've also added new cards! I'm about to upload the new rulebooks and print-and-play files. If you want to update the digital version, I added the new cards in a new folder in the link. In addition, I've adjusted some of the rules and have a few suggestions for the digital version:

- There are 5 new Event cards. Remove "Surprise Pizza Party" from the game
- 1 new Starter card
- The other cards just have clearer or adjusted wording
- 1 new achievement:
          Platinum Crown: Become the Champion with each of the 6 Starter cards.
                    Basically a player must play the game at least 6 times to get this. To make this easier, I suggesting being able to unlock the ability to choose the Starter card after completing the game once.

I suggest you refer to the rulebook for new clarifications on the cards and extra FAQs, but here are the major changes at least:

- The Store works a little differently. Bought or stolen cards are placed into the Binder after each kid action. So if Mindy (3 bucks), Jessa, and Link (4 bucks) are at the Store, instead of being able to grab all 5 cards and then placing them in the Binder all at the same time, the player decides which kid will buy or steal first, with Mindy able to spend ego to peek in between any of those actions.
- This also means that the "age" of cards, or whatever is the oldest card(s), will reset for each action.
- Side note, but I did a single run of the digital version and got the BOGO event. The Bogo event is meant to happen immediately before anything else. So you get a bunch of cards in your binder, and then when you get to buy cards again you might have to replace those cards. The new wording should make that a little more clear.
- If Mindy and Jessa go to the Playground, Jessa will be able to gain a card for free, correct? Well Jessa can also bring resources for trade and can also trade for a card, allowing her to gain 2 cards at the Playground (if Mindy is present).

Alright, I'll go post up those files now. Feel free to ask if you have any questions. And it's fine to take your time on the update, or if you're too busy to work on it anytime soon, that's fine too.

Thanks again for your help!

Oh No My Ego is Rising and My Friends are Leaving
AKA I Made a Board Game in a Month
A Bruised Egos Game Jam Post-Mortem

I've been feeling the post-jam blues lately so I decided to make a big post about my experiences and thoughts and lessons learned and whatnot. It's pretty long so I understand if you don't read it all. I kind of just need to get it all out so I can start thinking about what's next

INSPIRATIONS
I love board games. When I discovered that Kyle started another game jam, and I saw Ultra Mint as one of the characters, I knew I wanted to make a board game about her. A major inspiration was from a few Level 99 Games board games that I really like: Millennium Blades and Argent: the Consortium. Millennium Blades is a game in which you and your friends play as collectable card game players playing a game called Millennium Blades. Over the course of the game , you buy cards from the store, trade cards with other players, sell off sets of cards, build a hand of cards for the tournament phase, and (of course) compete in a tournament. You can clearly see how this game influenced the way Scrappet Kaiser Princess worked, from the booster pack look of the back of the cards to the simplicity of the dueling system. The only thing I wish I was able to replicate in my game was the climax of each round: the tournament phase, in which you use the deck you've spent an entire round constructing. I don't know if SKP could have had that without adding too much complexity to design around (in a month at least), so I opted instead for making a story-focused climax based on a high score. In Argent: the Consortium, you play as professors at a magical university, sending loyal students to gather resources or information about a secret consortium of voters so you can weasel your way into being voted in as the next Chancellor. From this game, I borrowed the thematic idea of sending out loyal workers to do your dirty work. Mechanically, I also used the idea of each type of worker having a special ability, and how workers don't gain resources immediately. If you enjoyed Scrappet Kaiser Princess, I highly recommend checking those two games out because they're pretty great (although they're a lot more complex and are not solo games). Actually I recommend checking out all of Level 99 Games' stuff because they try to capture that small niche of board gamers that also like video games and anime.

STORY & GAME DESIGN
I always knew that this origin story would be about Ultra Mint's first time getting into Scrappet Kaiser and losing her friends because of it. The original pitch for her actually says that she considers her card collection as her most precious treasure, so I thought it would be very interesting if I could give players the choice as to whether she treasures her collection because of her strong cards or because of her friends. I personally think high-stake stories involving the end of the world is fairly overdone in gaming, so I really wanted this story to be extremely personal and contained, with the main conflict being mostly internal and emotional.

Because I had decided to make a board game, I knew I couldn't rely too much on dialogue to tell the story and I had to bake it into the gameplay. That's why the only actual written parts of the story are the Intro and Endings in the rulebook. I didn't want to clutter up cards with too much reading. Yeah I know the texts on the Event cards exist but I don't think reading those is necessary to understand the Event, and they only add a little flavor to what's already implied by the effect. Originally the Event deck was going to be a set sequence, similar to the event deck in  something like Pandemic Legacy, so I could completely control the way the story is told. But because I wasn't exactly sure how I was going to present the game at the time, and to make set up a lot easier, I opted to only have one guaranteed event card. A lot of design choices were made to be simpler actually, because I knew the audience would mostly skew toward video gamers instead of board gamers, and I feel like the game is definitely more successful because of that.

Another successful aspect is the story. Even in playtesting with friends who had no idea about the Bruised Egos concept, they always get into the mindset of Ultra Mint and go hard on boosting Ego to replace their friends with more cards. (Although maybe it's a cultural thing, because I teach English in Japan, and the students I've showed it to generally try to keep their friends instead.) But yeah, the general game arc tells the story of how this group of friends falls apart: In the beginning of the week, Mindy hangs out with her friends, working with them to earn money or sneak cards from the store. Best friends Mindy and Jessa are inseparable. But at some point mid-game (if the player decides it to be), Mindy looks at her binder and thinks "I want more." She decides to abandon her friends to play Scrappet Kaiser in the alley with some weirdo. Her friends are still stuck working each day, while Mindy plays card games and brags about how good she's getting? Well of course they would get tired of it and leave. And on the final day, Jessa confronts her. The Starter card isn't important to Jessa just because it was a gift, but also because it was one of the few things she actually bought (because she tends to steal a lot for Mindy). Whether Ultra Mint loses her closest friend is up to the player, but because she has Dog Bower in Bruised Egos, it's likely that Jessa is still her best friend there (although I suppose that's not official canon lol)

You all probably already know this, but playtesting is very valuable. While the general structure of the game remained the same as the original concept, certain character abilities and the store definitely wouldn't have been the way they are if I hadn't gotten a bunch of friends to try it out. In early prototypes, I had Mindy decide which photo she would remove from the binder. In playtesting, I found that Spiff was almost always the first to go, with Penny being the last. So I made it random, and I buffed Spiff's ability. In another prototype, a popular strategy was to send Link to the store and buy a bunch of cards, while everyone else worked the Lemonade Stand. I had to adjust how the store worked (sending cards straight to the binder) AND buff Mindy and Jessa's ability to make it more enticing for them to visit the other locations. Some criticisms I couldn't really do much about (at least without changing quite a few things), like Penny having no reason to leave the Lemonade Stand. But that's fine. Penny likes baking anyway.

ART
It's not as prominent in the Digital version of the game, but the style of the board game is supposed to be hand-drawn. Like the main board is supposed to look like a hand-drawn map that Mindy drew, which is supposed to really make you feel like Mindy planning where each of her friends will go each day. I also opted for the slightly sloppy hand-drawn style because I'm not that great at drawing imo, although I've learned quite a bit this year, especially in the week and a half of drawing I did for the game. (Annoying promotional side note, but as part of one of my goals to get in the habit of creating art, I've been doing this weekly photoshop puppet show adaptation of the Pokemon manga if you want to check it out.) But yeah, the art for the title screen was like the last thing I drew for this game, and it's the art that I'm definitely the most proud of. I had asked my wife to draw the photos because she is a much better artist than me, but because she was so busy with work, I ended up doing all the drawing and only having her color the scrappets I drew. I'm glad I ended up doing all the drawing though, because the consistent art style ties everything together nicely, and I feel like I've leveled up my drawing skills!

It wasn't until I saw this Nani stuff pop up in other games, but I didn't know Kyle had created his own little collectable card game. I mean, I have the vod sitting in my YouTube Watch Later playlist, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. If I had known that, I still probably would have created my own little card game franchise, because then I would try to cram some of those mechanics into the system, which would have clogged up the game design, probably. I wonder though... Anyway, the monster design was really fun! The main design goal for these monsters was to avoid memes if possible: partly because I haven't kept up with the streams, but mostly because I wanted the cards to be funny on their own. There was a period of time last year when I decided to try doodling a few monster designs a day. Some of those monsters I named for the game and they appear as is (Dainty Shocks, Shy Bean, and Aiyai Captain are a few of these). Some were changed to look tougher or creepier to fit the strength of the card they were on (the original Slendelien was a lot more friendly, Fuzzy Tuber didn't have tentacles, and Darrip looked more sad and had more of a Foster's Home vibe). At one point, I asked any friends who playtested it for name ideas and I only got three: Dark Justice, Beelzebud (bee-el-ze-bud), and Funky Monkey Card (which I changed to Funkeemon Keycard to make it funnier). But for most of the rest, I spent half of a day thinking up names. I've had the Special and Starter cards named from the beginning, and since I had Griswald's Knees as a Special card, I decided to go all Exodia on it and add the rest of Griswald into the Store deck. I don't have too much to say about how I came up with most of the other names aside from finding names that were fun to say but were also weird (Cough Noir, Baby Filkiss, Froark). Near the end as I ran out of creative steam, I did the JJBA thing and looked through my music folder for interesting song titles to make names. "Godzuki" is a Sufjan Stevens song (skit is a more accurate word), "Idiot Boksen" and "He Who Flattened [Your Flame Is Gettin' Torched]" are Danielson songs, El Bañana was inspired by the Gorillaz song "El Mañana," similarly Vee in 20 Years is a letter change of Moses Sumney's "Me in 20 Years," and Black Hole Guppy is a Charly Bliss reference (the song "Black Hole" is from their album "Guppy"). ... I guess I didn't have to list all of those, but maybe people would have found that interesting. Oh and to the one guy I saw in chat that noticed: Yes, Zengou is wearing a Scooby Doo collar.

But yeah! It makes me really happy to see all the positive reactions to the scrappets I drew. Seeing how so many people were drawn to different scrappets feels really good. If you must know my favorite one though, it's Froark.

GAME JAM & RATINGS
This was my first game jam and I had a blast. It was great seeing so much variety in the different games. I was a little surprised at how so few games showed the reason why their chosen character was high ego or low ego, as that was the most important aspect to me when making the game. I'm not sure how much I should say about other games, and I wasn't able to get all of them to run (I went by Kyle's stream for rating those ones) , but if I had to choose a personal top 5, this would be mine:

1. Dungeon of Alexandria - Really fun game with really fun vibes. A well-deserved win.
2. Izil's Adventures: Blackfeather's Legacy - It's so much fun to explore in this game. I think the only issue that would need addressing is having a way to fix a stuck boat. It'd be fine if it's inconvenient, like maybe having to raise the anchor and have Izil physically push the boat, but yeah. I had a lot of fun with this, although I never beat it (one of the treasures didn't show up for me)
3. Executive Cobra: Origins - I love how different each route is, and the story is pretty well written, and each line is loosely connected. I think Judith is my favorite route with CJ as a close 2nd. The first puzzle in Max's route was kind of rough (I avoided watching this one on stream because I wanted to read it for myself). I just wish a battle system wasn't required because that's the weakest part imo. 
4. Scratch's Inferno - This game actually grew on me quite a bit. I had a few growing pains with the controls, like I kept walking into enemies while I was attacking them, but once I got used to it, the gameplay is very tight and the game, while a little hard, doesn't feel unfair.
5. I Saved the World but Then My Girlfriend Got Turned Into a Sword - The vibe and story for this one was really good. I love how there's actual reasoning for Bibi's sword form being tied to Haver's ego. I just wish they had more time to polish up the battle system.

The long ones I couldn't get around to playing before rating closed, so I imagine Minerva's Lost or Isle Izil or Mint's Ultra Adventure could be personal top 5 material. I'll try again sometime.

Speaking of Kyle's stream, I am super grateful to MeBID for creating the digital version. I'm not sure Kyle would have had the patience to read the rulebook on stream (especially because we went first), and it would have been a real pain to explain the rules in chat. With the digital version, Kyle was able to jump in, and we were able to have that great moment when he realizes that he must lose his friends to collect more cards. I wish we had like a week more so I could have made art for each ending or something, maybe added more detail to each menu, but I really like how it turned out in the end. I'm also grateful that, through programming the digital version, MeBID essentially helped clean up the rulebook. I was able to iron out any inconsistencies and clarify any rules questions thanks to them.

LOOKING BACK
There are definitely things I would probably have done differently. For starters, I would probably have started on art earlier. There were a few days after I felt satisfied with the actual gameplay and balance that I took a day or two off from working on the game. Then again, that little break was kind of important because I probably would have burned out, as I was for sure in the process of doing as I was working on the art. As for the actual game design, I wish I could have designed a more climatic ending. Using each card in your Binder for the big tournament instead of going off a point system would have been really cool. If I had teamed up for a digital version a lot earlier, I probably would have figured out a way because I wouldn't have to be tied to keeping the game as simple as possible. I kind of wish I playtested the digital version more before the deadline. I probably would have added clearer instructions about the goal and story of the game, and maybe caught that buck bug that caused Kyle to get an A Rank instead of a C Rank. However, I'm very happy and proud with how everything ended up. I uh, I still watch Kyle's playthrough and read the chat reactions because it gives me life. 

If I were to choose another character to make a game about, like if Ultra Mint wasn't an option, I probably would have gone with Alexandria or Executive Cobra. I think those two would have pretty good storylines for a potential board game. Alexandria's would be a sort of push-your-luck game about getting as much treasure as possible until she dies and becomes a skeleton at the end. Executive Cobra's would be an engine-building game all about gathering resources and businesses and making money and raising Ego. Iunno, I still really like what I did with Ultra Mint so it's hard to imagine going with someone else.

LOOKING FORWARD
So what is next for Scrappet Kaiser Princess? I did actually come up with a few new cards, so it's possible that I make a little expansion down the line. For example, a new Starter card could force Mindy to lose bucks at the end of each round. Thematically it would be a rare and fairly powerful card for a Starter, but it would also be really old so the kids would have to spend money to tape it together or else it would be lost. Another Event card I had in mind would be to force any cards bought in the store to go directly to the playground. The flavor being that those cards were stolen from the kids at the Store by the Nestor twins and given away at the playground... I'd have to think a bit more about more card ideas before I release a little mini expansion though. Maybe I could come up with alternate character abilities or something... Hm... I'll think about it.

A few friends have asked me if I would put this on Kickstarter. I'm not sure yet. Sure I really like it and I think it's a pretty fun game, but printing and shipping an actual board game might be too much of a hassle, especially because I live in a small apartment in Japan. The game theme is also a little niche, and it's a solitaire board game as well, so the audience for this game might not be large enough for a mass printing. So yeah, I am currently undecided about putting this up on Kickstarter and getting it printed.  I suppose I could put it up on a print-by-demand site though, but I'll have to do some research.

As for other projects, I've got nothing at the moment. I do have a few ideas though. I have an idea for Scrappet Kaiser Princess 2, which would still play similarly to the original. Instead of friends, you summon the scrappets in your binder to gather resources for you. And each one would have their own ability, and there would probably be a lot more locations, and the goal would mainly be to keep your Ego up. But I don't really have a story or emotional hook for that, and I think that aspect should be almost as good as the original at least. I've been thinking about the Bruised Egos fighting game though. There's this 1v1 card game called Exceed (also by Level 99 Games; yes they're my favorite board game company) that simulates a 2d fighting video game. I've been considering making all the Bruised Egos characters in that system, probably combining aspects of (almost) everyone's games... We'll see though

Well that's it! If you stuck around this long, thanks for reading all of this. I very much appreciate you enjoying this little project! Hopefully, we'll do this again next time. See ya!

Um... So I was going through CJ's path when I got into a fight with the Dark Warrior. We both spammed our defenses and now any attack either of us does will heal the opponent a bunch. We've been going at it for a while lol. How do I reset? Loving the story so far though

Edit: I ended up downloading the file to start a new game. Spammed Attack instead. I'm back in :)

I kept coming back to this one because I wanted to beat Dark Schippie Dues so bad... I finally got him! And with 1 hit point left, too! Really fun game.