Crazy Chef

So I happened to design a card game. You can buy it here if you are so inclined. The price is a bit steep at $46, but you get 230 very nicely finished cards and the game is really fun.

I've been playing variants of this card game with my friends for more than twenty years using several modified UNO decks with alternate rules scribbled on the face. Over the years I clarified our house rules, dropped some of the more crazy ideas, and documented all the edge cases. Since I now have free time to actually pursue my own interests (albeit without income or health insurance, thanks capitalism), I decided to look into creating my own custom deck.

I loaded up inkscape for the first time in years and after a few tutorials (I can recommend LogosbyNick's videos), I started some line art drawings. It was an opportunity to make use of my XP-Pen drawing tablet for a real project.

I wanted to avoid copyright issues, so I worked out a new theme for the game (namely you're all chefs trying to go home) and I spent a couple months working on the card design. I started by drawing an apple in a line art style I liked and for a while I planned on doing all the images in black and white until I remembered this is a pattern matching game, and it's probably better to have some color. Thankfully it's easy to color a line art drawing in inkscape. Because all my drawing were in SVG it was easy to resize them when I accidentally exported all 60 cards at the wrong size and in theory I could enlarge the images for a poster or t-shirt without losing any quality.

Still, I'm not a graphic designer and I hope this isn't too obvious. I know I got better as I went along because I cringe when I look back at my earlier drawings. You might notice some inconsistency in art styles as I tried different approaches to the line art. I originally rendered this slice of cheese in shaded black and white and then had to replace it with different shades of yellow. This sort of thing bothers me but I don't know if you'll notice.

Some of the drawings, like this potato, took days to complete, but I liked the end result so much I almost went back to make all the other foods similarly whimsical. I only decided against it because it seemed the project might never get done.

Joe, my local board game expert, suggested I look into thegamecrafter.com to have the cards printed, and I discovered they have a pretty nice setup. You send in your designs (in my case ~60 unique card images) and they will print, coat, and cut them for you. They also give you the option to sell the game in their shop and will give you a percentage of the sale.

I'd already achieved my goal of owning a custom card deck for my favorite game, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to also make it available for others to purchase. Unfortunately this involved more work, and for the past several weeks I've been writing and rewriting documentation, assembling marketing material for the websites, and basically doing administrative things.

I got the cards last Tuesday, we played it for the first time on Thursday in a little 3-person game, and then again on Saturday in a massive 11-person game at the aquarium which I'm still kicking myself for not taking more pictures.

I think the new cards are much better than my hacked together deck, but I'm still wondering if the rules are clear enough for someone else to understand and immediately have as much fun as I experience every time I play.

Check out more pictures and buy a copy of the game here.

I will be sending this link to my game groups. Most have shown some interest in buying a copy but they might just be being nice. I don't have any grand aspirations for this game. It's clear I'd have to spend much more effort on marketing to make it a legitimate/successful product, but I'm happy just owning a nice new deck of cards.

posted by na on March 24, 2024 04:20