Category: Color Space

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Color Space Game Design

How I approached iterative designs for Color Space

Color Space has gone through several revisions to get to where it is now. Before it was Color Space, it was called A Colorful Game…

Imagine this folded into a double-sided card. You’d turn to reflect which color was active.

It was a 3×3 grid of cards that you shifted around to make your color, which you randomly drew at the beginning of the game. First player to make ten of their color won. It soon evolved to getting points for making combos of colors. First to score 30 points won. I designed it for one of the Button Shy Game’s 18 card game challenges. Don’t think they gave it more than a glance. They went with games that were far more visually attractive. But I knew I was on to something and I needed to take the board game design process from start to finish. From idea to a fun product that you can buy.

Hex Tiles and reference sheets, and score cards, Oh my!

Then, I added hex tiles, representing primary colors, and roads, representing secondary ones. You had a hand of cards and you’d create a path of color combos, then play a card from your hand to collect points. Something wasn’t quite right, so I just removed the cards. You then just needed to create paths. Depending on the path, you could collect a certain number of roads. First player to collect five of each secondary color won. That’s when the game became Color Space.

The most recent iteration of Color Space. There are a few things to tweak here and there, but it’s shaping up.

I’ve been playtesting and working on design iterations of Color Space for a few months now. The game has progressed quite a bit in that time. I’ve changed the design aesthetic a few times, but for the most part it’s been a similar game across the board—no major changes. That’s always a good place to be.

With the trajectory I’m on, I should be able to put this game on Kickstarter this fall (2021). I’ve still got things to do. Videos to make; photos to take. I’ve got to publish ads about the game. Oh, and I’ve got to finalize the designs and make sure that I’m getting a prototype back from the manufacturer I’m working with that has the best quality.

I’ve also got to think of pledge tiers. I think the aesthetics of the logo and box art design are fantastic. I’d like to make some prints and t-shirts for higher tiers. Beyond that, I’ll likely reach out and ask what potential backers want to see.

After all this time, Color Space is almost ready to launch. I couldn’t be more excited. I hope that anyone reading this will be too, especially after seeing some of the gameplay videos.

…Speaking of which, I’m going to go work on that stuff. Until next time!

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Color Space

Meet Color Space, a two-player strategy game

Hello everyone! I’m nearing the final work on my designs for Color Space (formally titled “A Colorful Game”), a two-player tile-laying strategy game.

In Color Space, players compete head-to-head to be the first to collect five of each of the three secondary colors (15 secondary colors total) represented as diamonds in the picture below.

Assets are subject to change. Move primary color tiles to create secondary color diamonds. Create a qualifying path of these diamonds to be able to collect some!

This game has been a year-and-a-half in the making, and the journey’s not over yet! I’ve got a lot more playtesting to do. I’m also working on a Tabletop Simulator version of Color Space. There’s YouTube videos, advertising, getting the kickstarter page going—aaaah! I’m stressed. I should play some Color Space to relax.

Here’s a sneak peak of the box art.

Box art is subject to change. I’m happy with what I have here, but I’ll add some texturing to make it stand out more.

What’s next? My immediate next steps are to lock in all of the designs and get some beautiful prototypes printed. Then I’ll be able to make gameplay videos with assets that better reflect what the game will look like.

After that, I’ll work on an estimate with manufacturers and fulfillment facilities, and create a minimum budget for the kickstarter!

Then it’s marketing, marketing, marketing.

Look out for some more fall updates on Color Space.

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Color Space

A Colorful Game: What’s Next?

Hello everyone, it’s been a minute! Sorry for not posting in a while. I am, as we all are, navigating the virus and other passion projects. (I’m working on a creative writing career—go figure.) Now, my project has entered a phase where I’m playtesting the same build heavily to make sure that it’s balanced. This is important to a strategy game. Both players should be on the same playing field and players executing a fun move shouldn’t be defeated by random chance.

Every game—not just strategy games—needs to make sure that a particular player doesn’t have an unfair advantage. Sometimes this could mean that designers might need to tone down the benefit of a mechanic. You can sometimes have an unfair advantage just by being the starting player, though. I aim to make sure that isn’t the case in A Colorful Game.

I’ve got four things on my plate right now for A Colorful Game:

  • More balance playtesting
  • Design for physical game assets
  • YouTube tutorial video
  • Tabletop Simulator version (with scripting)

The bottom two items are still in their infancy, and I don’t have much to show for them. As for the top two:

More balance playtesting

This is from a most recent playtest. The grey meeple signifies the tile that was just moved. (Players can’t move the tile that was recently moved.)

I’ve been rigorously playtesting with my wife or sometimes playing against myself. It’s coming along smoothly. My big worry right now is that there’s a first player advantage. More testing will see if that’s the case.

Design for physical game assets

I’ve been wanting to make the components out of wood for the longest time. But I’m warming up more and more to the idea of making them out of resin (similar look and feel to modern sets of dominos). Resin is typically heavier than wood, and may have better longevity. Also, resin is typically less expensive to manufacture and generally easier to work with. The difference would mean more rounded corners as well versus wood. Here’s a quick side-by-side.

Resin mockup (left) versus a wooden mockup (right) of the assets for A Colorful Game.

The differences might look minor in Illustrator, but they’ll feel major when holding the physical components. I’ll still stand by my love of wooden components though. I just think they look neater and more unique.

Anyway, that’s it for now. Until next time!

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Color Space Game Design

The Many Trials of A Colorful Game

I’ve been heads-down refining the mechanics for A Colorful Game. Here are some of my discoveries from the 10 playtests that I’ve had so far:

Issue

Games were way too long. (1+ hour)

Resolution

I took care of this by minimizing the card count. Put the game at a smooth 30ish minute playtime. That’s the goal!

Issue

The game was also far more complex with decisions than I wanted it to be. You have to place AND move a tile—ugh! Too much brain juice to spend on what to do best. (I watched a player’s life flash before their eyes for more than 10 minutes, hoping to glean some forgotten wisdom to help them make a decision.)

Resolution

This was advice from another designer: Don’t make players have to add a new primary color tile to the play area AND have to move another tile. That’s a lot to deal with during a turn.

Note that doing this also helped to reduce the playtime to around 30 minutes.

Issue

Scoring points is just altogether difficult sometimes.

Resolution

Wild cards and bonus points! I added some cards to the game that let you fill in any blanks with a color of your choice. For example, if you have a contiguous path — orange, orange, green, purple, purple — you could play a wild with that to treat the green as a part of your path.

Also, if you scored with three or more cards, you get a bonus point; four or more and you get three bonus points!

IMG_0910
Wild card; but no bonus points for you!

This new format for the game helped shape it into the quick abstract strategy game that I was looking to make. That’s a huge milestone!

I’ve playtested this new version quite a few times and have found some new challenges to work through:

  • Games are a little too short now. It’s difficult for a player that’s behind to see a chance to come back and try to take the win.Idea to test: I’m going to add cards to the point deck or have the discard shuffle back into the deck.
  • With the introduction of wild cards, games feel like they’re not strategic enough (a little too luck of the draw).Idea to test: I’m going to add more wild cards and make them have a greater negative impact on players who use them.
  • Once you score a path, you remove all of the roads that you used to score that path with. That reduces momentum and gives too great an advantage to the first player to score.Idea to test: I think a “pick a color, remove all roads for that color” method can give the right balance of changing the play area in a fun way and not making players feel like they’ve got to start from scratch.
  • I need to work out how the game ends a little more. Right now, the game ends once the point card deck is depleted and neither player can score on their next turns…it just feels like an odd way to end the game.Idea to test: A “first player to x points” win condition should fix this. I just need to test whether this is fun and try to discover what “x points” value is best.

That’s all for now! Until next time…