Welcome to the first blog post, and thanks for reading! There's more to go back and talk about that has happened previously in the process of creating Yor, but something exciting is happening right now, so that will be the subject of the first post - I now have a physical prototype!
My first steps in creating the physical prototype were to get some blanks cards and markers, and start writing! I actually created all of the cards present in the first iteration of two separate 40 card decks in a single night. I had been brainstorming ideas for mechanics and card types for a while, but there was something special about finally putting the ideas to paper (cardstock?).
These marker cards were great for me to actually be able to feel how the game plays and find any major flaws, but my poor handwriting with a thick marker meant the cards were difficult for anyone else to really play with. This led me to use another option I had learned about during my initial research: Card Maker. Card maker is an awesome tool that allowed me all of the freedom to create exactly the cards I was envisioning. Like any new program, it took a bit of a learning curve but I picked it up pretty quickly and I was very happy with the results.
The design I landed on is only my first draft - the program is powerful enough to be even more flexible and specific for whatever I want to create, and over time you may see the visual design of these prototypes evolve as I figure out exactly how to do what I want.
The artwork is something I haven't mentioned yet - Where did I get such awesome art? Well, I'm not an artist, but I did recently get accepted into Dall-E 2 - an AI image generation tool which produces amazing results. I actually documented my experience with this program in a Youtube livestream, so you can see my reaction as this amazing program spit out these incredible results.
One thing to note about this artwork is that it isn't licensed for commercial use - which means I won't be able to sell these cards. As far as I can tell, using them as placeholders while testing is perfectly allowed by their usage policy, so I will be doing that until I get get some great artists to make some art that I can use in the final product.
I've started recording a video series on how to play Yor. The first episode is available now, with more coming soon. Many parts of this will change over time as I test and tweak the game, but I've played a few "real" games with playtesters and it feels surprisingly good for how early in the process I am.
As of this writing, I am still looking for help of every kind in creating this game (I'm a one man team at the moment). If you or someone you know might be a good fit to help me build my dream, please get in touch!
Thanks for reading my first of many blog posts!