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Calgary25980 Posts
Time for an update!
If you have no idea what this is, Coagulation and I have been making a card drinking game. You can read our FAQ here: http://mana.firecaster.com/faq/
We will soon be calling for beta testers to help us out. If you are interested, please sign up and put "teamliquid" in "how did you find us?" http://mana.firecaster.com/signup/ If you're not interested, you can also sign up for our mailing list to stay up to date with what we're up to.
Coagulation and I hit a second wind recently. He's been churning out new Ultimate art, lore art, instruction and box art, as well as updating all the existing artwork. The updated art looks really, really good.
Meanwhile, I've been wrestling with the struggle of the game being complex vs simple. The game is in best state its ever been in, but I believe some cards can be rewritten to have the same gameplay effects while having less text. For now, we set a goal of having no card text larger than this:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/220AP2R.png) Arbitrary text limit. That divider and gradient will move up and down to fit the text.
Outside of that, I had to learn how to use Adobe InDesign, which was a fun experience. It's pretty intuitive and powerful for making books and text-heavy documents. I never even knew it existed before this project! I've been working to get a beta version of the instructions out that isn't a simple Word document. I would say they are around 90% complete, and will be a focus of the next month. Here's the cover so far:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/pYwuflf.jpg) The work in progress cover.
Lore
I know people will say "It's a drinking game, why does it need lore?" And to a certain point, I agree. But I think it adds a lot more personality to the Heroes. It's fun to know who you are playing as and what's important to them. Also, it gives some background to what these cards are and why you're drinking. We plan to keep the lore completely out of the instructions, so people who aren't interested in the story can complete avoid it.
Here are the 12 Heroes' faces, which came out of the lore:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/AcWsuZf.jpg) Some faces.
We decided to put the faces on the Hero cards themselves also, to add some more importance:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/M9PIeQg.jpg) A card with a face!
And this map of the world of Mana Spirits took all my terrible Photoshop skills to make. Then Coagulation made it pretty:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/7Yw3hON.jpg) The map used throughout the lore.
Design
My wife and I made this box to test the size, and I think it turned out pretty well. It holds everything nicely.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/YcRh7lu.jpg) Outside of the box.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/NqWwXKK.jpg) Inside of the box.
We also finished replacing the tracking board. We used to have two boards in the middle where everyone tracked their life points. It was clunky, people knocked the tokens all the time, and people always had to ask which token represented which player. We replaced them with individual stands:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Lej1X9q.jpg) The double sided Hero tracking stands.
You can see they are double sided so both you and your opponents can clearly see all your Hero's information. I'm not sure if these can be professionally produced yet... but we will find out!
Testing
I played two games last week. First, 1v1 against my wife. The pace of play was good, but there were too many cards on the table causing a lot of confusion. After this, I decided to completely cut a mechanic. We latest tested a 4-player game with 3 people who had never played before. Without the mechanic, the pace of play was good and everyone had positive reviews. The negative feedback came from not having a detailed turn order summary, which the beta instructions will solve. Things are looking good!
Art
As I said, Coagulation has been blasting out new art at a record pace. Here are some of my favourite updated Heroes:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Yu9k85o.png) The work in progress on the Summoner (Hero version).
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/mTkvAyL.jpg) The Archangel (Hero version).
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/x1uWOvI.jpg) The Summoner (Ultimate version).
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/K7GUXdA.jpg) The Ranger (Hero version).
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/aijVTzk.jpg) The Rager (Ultimate version).
 
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Bisutopia19231 Posts
I got so excited just seeing the thread title! Everything looks great so far. Ill give more feedback as I look more. Great job chill.
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Calgary25980 Posts
On March 19 2015 13:12 BisuDagger wrote:
I got so excited just seeing the thread title! Everything looks great so far. Ill give more feedback as I look more. Great job chill.
Thanks  Though to be fair, 99.7% of the credit is Coagulation's.
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This is amazing.
Coag injected so much style.
Handsome looking box.
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Papua New Guinea1059 Posts
Is the art supposed to be a rip-off by design? I mean, the location names, the wizard art, the dragons on the last picture, dark elves, the angel...
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Looks so sick. It's been a long project and it looks like it's definitely gonna pay off
Any chance you will record a play session during beta?
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Signed up! Looking forward to play testing this with my group. They're always looking for another excuse to drink while gaming.
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Amazing, signed up for the beta. Good luck with everything!
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On March 19 2015 19:20 HornyHerring wrote:
Is the art supposed to be a rip-off by design? I mean, the location names, the wizard art, the dragons on the last picture, dark elves, the angel...
i was thinking that too, just some honest criticism
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Katowice25012 Posts
Looks awesome, keep giving us updates :D
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On March 19 2015 19:20 HornyHerring wrote:
Is the art supposed to be a rip-off by design? I mean, the location names, the wizard art, the dragons on the last picture, dark elves, the angel...
im not sure what your referencing in any of this other than some blizzard influenced names on the map and some pretty standard fantasy tropes..
baby dragons in the last picture are ... baby dragons...(game of thrones?).. im sure there have been baby dragons before so.. im ok with that. the elf is a standard elf as far as im aware but I wouldnt try to downplay the massive influence from metzen and samwise... angels are a rip off from the bible i guess. perhaps elaborate on this a bit cause i have no idea what to make of this or if anything actually needs changed....
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Papua New Guinea1059 Posts
On March 19 2015 23:44 Coagulation wrote:Show nested quote +On March 19 2015 19:20 HornyHerring wrote:
Is the art supposed to be a rip-off by design? I mean, the location names, the wizard art, the dragons on the last picture, dark elves, the angel... im not sure what your referencing in any of this other than some blizzard influenced names on the map and some pretty standard fantasy tropes.. baby dragons in the last picture are ... baby dragons..... im sure there have been baby dragons before so.. ok the elf is an elf... angels are a rip off from the bible i guess. perhaps elaborate on this a bit cause i have no idea what to make of this or if anything actually needs changed....
The wizard is dota antimage, locations on the map are hugely influenced by Game of Thrones, the angel is Imperius from D3, elves look like wc3 dark elves, especially the last picture, that's Tyrande with a recolored hair and recolored cat (well she is hugely overweight and out of proportion too), baby dragons are obviously from GoT - 3 of them, different colors... If you'd show us more pictures we'd find more references.
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Standard fantasy...
People can relate to this,
kinda like you did.
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On March 19 2015 23:56 HornyHerring wrote:Show nested quote +On March 19 2015 23:44 Coagulation wrote:On March 19 2015 19:20 HornyHerring wrote:
Is the art supposed to be a rip-off by design? I mean, the location names, the wizard art, the dragons on the last picture, dark elves, the angel... im not sure what your referencing in any of this other than some blizzard influenced names on the map and some pretty standard fantasy tropes.. baby dragons in the last picture are ... baby dragons..... im sure there have been baby dragons before so.. ok the elf is an elf... angels are a rip off from the bible i guess. perhaps elaborate on this a bit cause i have no idea what to make of this or if anything actually needs changed.... The wizard is dota antimage, locations on the map are hugely influenced by Game of Thrones, the angel is Imperius from D3, elves look like wc3 dark elves, especially the last picture, that's Tyrande with a recolored hair and recolored cat (well she is hugely overweight and out of proportion too), baby dragons are obviously from GoT - 3 of them, different colors... If you'd show us more pictures we'd find more references.
Im a huge asoiaf fan and I dont really see much going on map wise in that direction. I would consider it more warcraft oriented with the dark portal and the underground city etc but Its more of a nod to our favorite fantasy places than any kind of implementation to the game. The map is just a single pic for flavor and has no bearing on the game itself at this point.
I can see the diablo resemblance and the dark elves for sure but I dont think there is anything in them that ties directly to specific characters.
I never played dota or heard of an antimage but a quick google search says hes a purple wizard with a dark complexion. Its completely possible that I seen him somehow somewhere around here and subconsciously thought he was cool (im on a blizzard fan site afterall) but I doubt there would be much confusion considering its such a broad sweeping trope.
As for three dragons..
You cant do anything with dragons anymore that hasnt already been done a million times unless you give them nukes or make them fly space ships its probably done to death already so might as well try and go for what works.
For what its worth the original picture only had 1 dragon. I added the other 2 in later cause I thought it looked empty and chill said he didnt like it that way so some of the dragons will probably be removed. I dont know if he didnt like it cause of the asoiaf reference or not but I dont think it ever crossed my mind untill you mentioned it.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/L6smVJfl.jpg)
Anyway thanks for the quick feedback it is hugely appreciated when I get helpful spot on insights. Except the chubby ranger. I refuse to budge on that.
more pictures
http://mana.firecaster.com/media/
http://www.omgus.net/portal.php
heres a naga riding a shark.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/yyb92rwl.jpg)
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That's badass haha
unless it's literally a straight lift complaining about similarities in such a trope filled genre is silly.
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That Rock Golem summoner is sexy as fuck!
The only critique I have is the cards' list; I feel it's distracting with all the spikes and skulls and defined black borders. The card art in contrast is softly drawn and makes it feel like it's secondary. Personally I'd experiment with a frame that's far less agressive in colour and form. Smooth straight and grey would allow for the list to act as a frame for the artwork and text. I feel it's currently intrusive in that it asks you to look at it when I think its job should be to help guide the eyes to the relevant stuff in the middle that helps one play the game.
I'd suppose to experiment with that Mol'Phyoz card, give it different frames and see what reads best.
Hope that helps, I'd love to play this game in the future.
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Looking better and better! Coag hero status! Chill relentless status! Do want much beta test.
Two points of feedback I feel strongly about:
The font for card text is not very attractive nor readable. I recommend something with serifs and possibly small capitals for lower case. Right now it doesn't seem to fit the game's feel or jive with the card design.
Also I agree with Saechiis that the card borders take away attention from the art (O injustice!). I get wanting to have prominent important info, but that might be better achieved with colorful icons / bold numbers on a more neutral and unobtrusive background frame. Like jewels set in a ring.
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Cool. The hero's face in the (1,2) spot reminds me of Knight Lautrec from Dark Souls.
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Calgary25980 Posts
All feedback is incredibly valuable to us so thanks for taking the time to give your thoughts.
I think Coagulation did a good job explaining the inspiration for his artwork. I guess ill just add that I simply look at his artwork and try to think of a name that fits it. Since we aren't professionals, we were likely heavily influenced by games and books we like, but im certain we did not intend to directly rip off anything existing assets. We were definitely going for a classic fantasy style, and to be frank, its hard to find anything that doesn't look like 10 things that were already done.
I agree on the font... there is a long story there. Right now the cards are procedurally generated by a custom program my friend wrote. Because of that we are limited to what we can do to the font. Its manually stretched but spaces are condensed. Beyond that, it likely isnt the right font to even start with. Recently ive learned to properly use InDesign and Photoshop so I will be adding the text manually now, which will open a lot of possibilities.
We have really struggled with the borders. The borders provide game information too - they aren't just for looks. The outer border tells you the value of the card (gold, silver) and the inner border and text gradient tells you how the card is used (its type). We both agree they do take away from the eyes focus but we dont want to look the game information they provide. Its on our "to review and fix" list.
Thanks for all the sign ups so far
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