Mutant Pizza

The development of Graphic Design is My Passion has exploded over the past month — in a good way, of course. I’ve been busy these past months and haven’t had time to write out a proper design journal — or even an improper design journal — for the game.

Now, I finally have time There’s so much to talk about!

Kickstarter in the fall!!

Yes, that heading warrants two exclamation points. I don’t care if you hate them! I have the right to use all of the drastic punctuation I want, damnit. (I didn’t feel like using an exclamation mark there!)

Y’all, GDMP is coming to Kickstarter in the fall. I’m going to need your support now more than ever to make this Kickstarter successful. That means:

1. When I make the Kickstarter page and beg you to follow it, please follow it! That helps me become more visible.
2. Talk about my website and GDMP amongst anyone you think would like it, you know, if it comes up, naturally…in conversation. I’m just saying, don’t force it. But remember me. I exist! My game exists. Help get the word out.
3. When the Kickstarter becomes live, do more sharing plz.
4. If GDMP is the type of game you like, a small-box, lighthearted party game with limited, visual communication aspects to it, please consider backing the game. I don’t know how much it’ll cost, but my goal is to keep it within the $20-$30 range (shipping excluded).

I demoed it at ECCC 26!

Behold, acronyms! Everyone loves a good acronym or two. Look, I just didn’t want the section header to be long, okay? Get off my back about it.

Moving on, people who went to ECCC got to play the current version of GDMP. I decided not to take many photos or any videos at the Con, I opted to stay in the moment and connect with people more directly and authentically.

So you’ll have to take my word for it when I say the consensus was that GDMP was a blast! People loved it, wanted to play again and again, and some people even came back over multiple days to play it. It’s fun to craft fun. I love to see it.

We have color!

I decided to try a limited color palette to give the designer more dynamic choices to make in the game. I was originally against this because it makes creating a solitary shape more challenging, but the fun ways people were utilizing color during a playtest made me rethink this. Sometimes it’s good to test things that you think won’t work, even things you’ve tested already and have shown to not work. (If that makes sense.) Regardless, I was pleasantly surprised.

People got quite creative with the colors, using them to dig out shapes, signal the usually color pattern for a particular object, and create more intricate designs.

I’ll be tweaking and testing this combination over the coming months to find the most fun combinations to work with.

Gameplay tweaks

Some small but mighty changes that have allowed me to heighten theme and achieve the level of interactivity between players that I wanted. The turn and round gameplay flow goes like this:

• Two types of players: Stakeholders and Designer
• Stakeholders can either attempt to guess what’s being designed or offer feedback
• Stakeholders have one chance to guess, so they’d better get it right the first time!
• If Stakeholders opted to instead give feedback: they draw the top three cards of the deck and choose one to discard, handing the other two to the designer who then must choose one card to incorporate into the design (the unchosen card also gets discarded)
• Stakeholders can continue to offer feedback until they run out of cards, but when they do, the designer must receive exactly one card that they must incorporate into the design

Apologies if that unordered list feels haphazardly articulated, it’ll be far more eloquently and efficiently crafted in the actual rulebook.

Hard mode expansion (experimental)

The base game of GDMP seems solid, barring a few tweaks and nitpicks, so I’ve started working on a possible hard-mode expansion. The idea is that with the base game, you’re designing an icon using triangular shapes; with the expansion — a standalone expansion, mind you — you’re using abstract shapes to redesign a logo based on a targeted demographic.

I’m still noodling with this one, there are still some elements not quite right with it, but it’s still playable! (Yay!)

POSSIBLE transparent cards

I say POSSIBLE because I haven’t even been able to test the concept yet. Making translucent cards is far more difficult, for me at least, than making opaque cards that I can just print out at home.

I want to soon try this option, but it’ll take time to make the prototype. These cards would likely also be an expansion to the base game.

Future thought-brain thinky thoughts

I’ve got work to do to get this game Kickstarter-ready:

1. Finalize rules
2. Lock down visual design
3. Have a high resolution prototype made
4. Make Kickstarter videos and take buttloads of photos of the game
5. Finish the Kickstarter page for the game
6. Notify everyone in creation, begging them to follow that page
7. Set on an actual date to launch the Kickstarter

Then I simply launch the Kickstarter and lose sleep stressing endlessly about every little thing I’ve done wrong. Easy peasy.

Now it’s time to go do all that, until next time!