Evolution of a prototype
05-11-2017
The first prototype for Heroes of Tenefyr was a bunch of hastily scribbled text
on poorly cut out pieces of paper. All I made were some basic cards and a few
enemies with loot attached; the bare minimum to have something playable. It
seemed to play quite well, and solidified the idea as something worth expanding
upon, so I did. More than 100 hand written little pieces of paper later, I had a
fully functional prototype. It worked, it was quick, but it was also ugly and hard
to read.
So I moved on to a second prototype version. I made a quick card layout with all
the important elements present and typed out the text for all the cards, making
some changes to the wording here and there and fixing things from the first
prototype that didn't work. This prototype was much easier to read, which improved
the ease of play a lot. Having a printed version also made it easier to make small
changes, either by writing on it, or simply printing a new version. This prototype
lasted for several months and was used extensively for playtesting. A lot of small
changes were made to individual cards, but the prototype served it's purpose
well.
The main thing that was lacking was artwork, and a nice design. I started working
on an actual design for the layout, with different placement of the various
elements to make room for artwork in the middle. Then I traced this design to make
a low-ink easy to print version as the third prototype. This third prototype gives
a better feeling of what the final version will be like and is great for testing
readability and to see if the placement of all the elements of the cards feels
intuitive.
I'm currently working on a fourth prototype with a semi-final card layout and
placeholder artwork for all the cards, until the final artwork is done.