[Ben Levy]

What game/ logo content would you like feedback on from the BGDL+ community this week?

[Ben Levy]

I’ll start us off so we can get the ball rolling!I’d love to get layout design feedback on our current concepts for our player boards!
(Disclaimer, the background art is not ours and is meant to be a placeholder.)

[Adam Webber]

I’m not the lead Graphic design teacher at our school, but I do teach introductory graphic design. Here’s what I would tell a student if he/she brought this to me:

-The current layout is good. By separating it into thirds, you’ve given it a good weight.

-Your character is facing the wrong direction – generally you want them moving into the center to drive the viewer’s eye in that direction. Right now, he’s pushing my gaze off the page.

-The background is not working at all. And don’t tell me that it’s just because it’s placeholder art: any similar art placed there will look bad. You know this, because you’ve used a white drop on the character and text. That white drop doesn’t add anything to the design; it’s there as a fix for a bad design element. It makes the text readable, but it’s still just a blob at first glance. Focus on making sure all your elements enhance your overall design. If you find yourself adding an element purely to fix another element, just fix that other element instead of adding something new.

– Title, subtitle, and name text are all too similar. While I wouldn’t go with a different font for anything but the name, you should strive to make all this text immediately readable at first glance. “Favor Abilities” is currently the most readable.

-I don’t like the decision to make everything upper-case. That’s a personal preference, though.

-The offset numbers on health and favor(?) are a pleasant way of getting more numbers in – try experimenting with different shapes. Also, there’s no way of telling where the player’s base health/favor are. Do something to clearly note what the base is. Also, with health, I suggest adding a few elements near the top and bottom to make over-clocked health and near-death more awesome/scary. Try using colors and subtle iconography to do this.

-There is a lot of negative space in the upper right hand corner. It looks unintentional because it is trapped on 3 sides. This is perhaps a better location for the character name and class.

-I haven’t played your game, so I can’t say for sure, but your “draw” and “discard” helpers are in a really weird place. Do you really intend player cards to go in an oddly right-center location? If so, what goes to the left and right of those cards? Perhaps change these to be more centered and horizontal if there’s nothing else in the play area. If there’s other stuff in the play area, then name it’s location (“dice”, “resources”, etc.) and add that in too.

-The numbers on your favor abilities aren’t exactly clear. I think they are the cost – BUT they use the same look as your health and favor counters, which display an amount. This leads me to wonder if they actually show the amount of times you can use the favor ability, but they don’t have their own associated counter. They need to be either distinct or the same – not this odd middle ground you currently have.

That’s about it. I know it’s a lot, but that’s why we do prototypes. Looking forward to seeing version 2.

[Ben Levy]

Wow, Adam! Thank you so much for taking the time to offer so much good feedback! There’s a lot of great points and direction in here for us to refine and turn into version 2. Thanks so much for your time and critiquing! It’s going to help our game be better.

[Michael Carpenter]

Adam had some awesome feedback above, and he covered a lot. Here’s a few more thoughts from a graphic designer procrastinating his professional design work:

• Great character illustration! Love the choice to make the character older, age diversity seems to be rarely considered in character illustration.
• Agree with the readability comments Adam made – the background makes text harder to read, and there should be a clearer hierarchy of different kinds of text. A greater difference in font sizes or perhaps judicious use of bold text could help.
• On a related note, Adam is right that all-CAPS is a personal choice – but I would strongly suggest you either change the font or change this font to Normal Caps. This is because it’s a serif font, with little “feet” and “hats” (so to speak) at the top and bottom of each letter. All-CAPS is much more legible in sans-serif fonts than in serif fonts, where these serifs can make capitalized letters feel crowded and “heavy”.
• This may be a side effect of this being a prototype, but still worth pointing out: In the two trackers, there’s an error within the numbers. Specifically, inside any number with a “hole” (e.g. 6, 8, 9), the white background coloring is missing. It’s hard to notice, but has the side effect of making it look like some of those numbers are “filled in”.
• Some other suggestions to fill in the awkward empty space in the top right: Extend the favor abilities all the way to the right; make one or both trackers vertical or S-shaped to fill that space; or make the right 1/3 of the image the area where the “draw” and “discard” piles can be placed.

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I’m excited to see round 2! Great start!

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[Adam Webber]

Agreed, I love the character art.

One last note: there’s something weird going on with the number font. It looks to me like it might not be a bold font, but a regular font that has been bolded by a stroke. This might not be the case (could be just a bad font or maybe a rasterized font with the transparent white getting a paint-bucket fill) , but either way you’re getting some bleed in the 6s and 3s, while everything seems extra “chunky.” I’d suggest a different, bold, font for this; and be sure not to rasterize it if that was the case.

[Ben Levy]

Phenomenal points! From everyone really! So much good in here to digest and utilize for version two. It truly helps to blind critique because you all pick up on certain beats that others (family and friends) miss or are too “nice” to bring up. Thank you so much!

[Ben Levy]

Thank you so much, Michael! All three of you have brought up consistent points for me to alter.

[Bob Whitely]

It’s a good start, indeed, Ben. A lot of good points have been made about the art thus far, and I, too, look forward to seeing the next version. Adam mentioned about the character. Jack Kirby was a master of pointing folks eyes to exactly what points in the scene he wanted them to see, and in what order. For example, flipping the character causes the eye to naturally follow the line formed by his weapon inward over to the Favor Abilities.

Personally, I always prefer the character’s name to be one of the first things I see, and I always look top left to bottom right, unless something is demanding my attention, so I’d prefer the name on the top, or larger/different font centered below him. He has a super short name. The tab should be longer. Other characters will have longer names (always design things for the most text, most troublesome character first, so that if it works, you know all the others will also.) Since you know the names will be longer, I’d not be worrying about not covering his other foot. You could change his size if needed, even make him much bigger and just show his upper half, but that could cause other problems with his weapon depending on final layout. But that tab should be bigger.

The tab’s size should work for all characters, not just him. He has super short name. And the tab blends in with the others, which it shouldn’t, because it doesn’t serve the same purpose. Those tabs just scream put a card or token below me. Not sure if that was the intent.

I’ve never been a fan of offset numbers like you have, in part because a small bump to the table easily makes them get a bit lost. That’s hard to avoid, but larger boxes, at least, would help. I’d prefer just having 2 disconnected rows, personally. You might consider shifting the text downward and then have the numbered boxes on the right side vertically in a diff configuration.

I don’t understand the iconography above the character’s name. In fact, none of the iconography tells me anything, except the Guardian. I assume the heart is health, but the + is confusing as if you’re saying that’s bonus health, so I’m not sure there either. Whenever possible, icons should be intuitive. This isn’t a must have for every single icon if they reappear again and again all over the place, but generally, yes.

The way the player board is laid out it looks like cards or tokens are supposed to be put below the board, but then you also have the name in a similar box and the Guardian, so that’s a bit confusing without seeing more about how it all works. These things are tricky, but I know it will just keep getting better and better over time!

[Ben Levy]

Thank you, Bob! Love the ideas you have brought forth. All of this feedback is going to be utilized in round 2!