Madcaps
In Madcaps, you use the cards you collect to take part in a one-on-one battle against another player. You utilize various strange and interesting units, items and vehicles in a convoluted attempt to steal back your cards from your opponent’s vault. The first player to take all the cards from their opponent’s vault is the winner!
Process
A trading card game.
As I wanted the game to be functional, I anticipated that play testing would be an integral part of my process. This meant I had to develop the rules and design all the cards right at the start of the project since play testing would be impossible without them.
Spreadsheet
My goal was to make 120 unique cards for play. Knowing that I was going to be making plenty of changes as I go, I needed a way to create the prototypes of 120 cards that could easily be changed if necessary. I wanted to make that process as efficient as possible. To do this, I utilized InDesign’s data merge function, taking information from a spreadsheet and filling that information into set fields.
Prototype
I let my imagination run wild when coming up with character names and abilities, as well as descriptions of each card. This information was stored in my spreadsheet. I ended up with many silly character names and powers. This set the tone for the game and influenced the style of the cards later on.
Play Testing
Once I made the 120 cards, I created a brief rulebook and gave the cards and rules to participants for play testing. I asked them to read the rules then assemble a deck. Due to the ongoing pandemic, I was unable to playtest in person. As an alternative, we used Tabletop Game Simulator to play and test the game. This allowed us to play and communicate online.
Informed Changes
These play tests helped me identify what part of the game’s rules needed to be changed and helped to inform the design of the cards. It gave me an idea of what information would be most necessary. Testing led me to change the position of elements on the prototyped cards and add additional colour to make different types of cards easier to identify.
Art Style
When I wrote out the names and abilities of each character, I had an idea in my head of what I wanted them to look like. I tried a few different styles but I found that my vector illustration suited what I had in mind the best. This was still quite time-consuming. In an effort to work faster, I tried a pixel art style. It allowed for quicker illustrations that were at a quality I liked.
Further Refinement
After deciding on an art style, I created more cards while working on refining the card designs themselves.
