Escape from Tag World Devlog 4: Additional Game Pieces

With the final card design finalized, I started to figure out some of the extra pieces outside of the cards.

I did some sketches for the box art, trying to figure out the logo that way so it could integrate with that main design. I really liked the idea of the Linkship Pilots being central to the design and showcasing some aspects of Tag World, but that does mean drawing the Linkship, which I'm not super thrilled about.

I took the one I liked most of the sketchbook thumbnails and started to lay it out in Photoshop, using one of the box templates on TheGameCrafter to figure out what size it needed to be. I'm a bit nervous about making the Linkship so prominent in the design, but I'll probably look into some ways to try and get the perspective right for the final design.

Before drawing the box art, I wanted to really finalize the logo so I could integrate the design around it. I started with various typography tests using different fonts and arrangements of text. I started in black and white before going into the coloring of it to figure out the layout. I wanted to make the T and the W stand out more. I played around with making the T more tree-like in some of these.

And then I started to add color! I'm still trying to feel out the overall direction here. The colors are still fairly rough. I'm also not 100% on this layout and design, but I'm getting somewhere maybe. I'll probably end up reworking it by the next blog post.

Then I put together some backs for the cards using this design. I'm going to have a green back for the cards that cost Birdians and then orange/yellow backs for the Linkship Pilots. Once I finish the logo I'll update that on here as well. 

Then I was thinking about different parts like pieces that could help you keep track of your Birdians or Points in a turn better. This would be for each turn, so you could view your current of each to better strategize. So I started concepting what those might look like. At first, I wasn't sure if I was going to use tiles, a board, or something else. But I wanted to get some ideas concepted out at least to have options. So I started by coming up with some tokens with the basic symbols on them with numbers. I ended up using a variation of these later on, but not this exact design, since these were still the rough Birdian and Point shapes before I finalized them.

I also was thinking about how sometimes I want to track if an ability has already been used or if a card has counted towards deploying a Linkship Pilot. So I made some tile concepts that could help track that. I didn't place the final symbols on here, but I was playing around with some textures and ideas to show that. I'm probably going to end up scrapping this idea and just going with flipping the card though, since I don't think they're super necessary.

There are a few actions that happen each turn, up until turn 5, so I was thinking about some kind of dial to use to keep track of which turn you're on. I don't really like this design, but the idea was to have it be tree-like so the top is the leaves and the bottom is the wood. I was mostly playing around with some textures to see what works. I don't think I'll even end up using this because I was realizing this started to add too many pieces to the game. So this was just a test while thinking about extra pieces that could be helpful.

Then I started to think about the 3D game pieces. I'm leaning more towards creating a board that you can use for scoring rather than tokens, because I feel that'd be easier to count up as you're actively keeping score. So I 3D modeled a Linkship in Blender and then took it into Flashprint for 3D printing. It only took me about an hour to get it through to that process, but then my 3D printer was having some clogged filament issues, so that slowed me down and took up more of my time than I wanted it to.

Luckily Jinny was able to help me get my 3D printer back up and running so I was able to start doing prints! I started with one that was a bit smaller than I wanted. So then I printed it again at a bigger size and I think it turned out pretty much the exact size I was going for! I also tested out painting the first one with paint markers but I kind of prefer just the regular green filament one.

So then I looked at the size and how they'd fit on a board. I used Wrong Party's board as a reference and I really liked how they felt.

From there, I created my own score board. I wanted it to have a tree-like feeling like the rest of the elements of Tag World. So I started with just some leaves on a brown background, but then Jinny gave me some feedback and I was able to update it to integrate a lot better! With this design, I was going to use 2 boards actually that you put together to create 1 larger one so it would fit in the box I'm planning to use.

When I went to upload the board design to TGC, it unfortunately changed my game to need a bigger box size. So I had to search for other pieces that would actually fit and uploaded test art to ensure it wouldn't change on me mid-development again after uploading. I didn't want to change the box size because I'm trying really hard to make this game very small in size and not have a lot of components needed. The goal was to keep this one very simple compared to Nay Saga, in terms of addition pieces. So I had to go back to the drawing board and redo the placement of everything for this board due to the difference in size. It turned out maybe looking better in the end and more focused, so it was probably a good change in the end.

Then I made some minor updates to cards. But I finally finished the cards and printed all of them out on paper! I wanted to make sure they were all 100% good to go before the final TGC prints, so I went through and did some proofreading on the cards and ensured they were good to go. I also did some final playtesting.

Then I started to work on some of the other elements. First, I wanted to differentiate the Linkship Pilot symbol from the Point symbol so it'd be more clear in the ability descriptions on some of the cards. So I redesigned it to look more like a pilot symbol, but still include the start to make that clear of which card it was associated with.

Then I made a few extra cards, since I had some thoughts after doing my real final playtest with the paper cards. I wanted a way to keep track of which groups you have in the deck, because that could make it easier to work towards certain Linkship Pilots. I tried out tracking them on a dry erase board and liked how that felt, so I decided to design a card to track that.

Also while I've been doing my playtests, I've kept a written piece of paper with some of the simple rules I wanted to remember. So I made a simple quick rules card, which may end up just being the back of the group tracking card above. It just has the simple rules. I didn't spend a lot of time on the design, mainly just because it's meant to be a quick reference point.

  

Then I updated the score board. I'm thinking 1 side will be if you're playing the full version with Linkship Pilots up to 70 cost (which is the previous board I had), but then if they're only playing up to 50 cost, players can use this board. This board separates the Birdian and Point spaces out so it's easier to have both on the same spaces at the same time. I changed the colors also to be more fall-colored leaves for the Points, and keeping the green leaves for the Birdians. This might also allow me to use the green 3D printed pieces for one of them so it stands out more.

All that's left really is the final logo and box art, then the instruction booklet. And at that point it'll be ready for the final print. So in the next post, I'll be ready to wrap up all of the final assets!

Escape from Tag World Devlog 3: Final Card Design

After another break from working on this project (outside of playtesting), I finally came back to try and finalize some of the assets and the card design itself. Development on this project has been a little sporadic, but this time I did make more progress and I'm going in a much better direction!

I finally playtested the game with a real person! Jinny tested with me for about 2 hours and she gave me a lot of really good notes. Based on her notes, I made a couple of quick mock-ups. These were mostly to make the Group symbol larger and more prominent on the card. I got feedback to updating the rewards too, so I made a really rough idea here. I'm looking forward to making more updates to further improve the design!

I tried another take at using the number of symbols to display instead of typing a physical number, but when it gets to the maximum (5) of each, the card gets a little busy. So I decided not to go this route, but it was worth trying to see what it looked like.

Then I went back to trying to move some things around to make the group at the top and the cost at the bottom. It felt a little confusing and I didn't really like where this was going. But the costs in the boxes was a little bit better. The harsh corners on those boxes wasn't really speaking the same language as the other rounded shapes though, so I didn't really like that part though.

 

So I moved everything back to have the cost at the top and the group at the bottom. I decided to move the group icon up so it was still next to the name of the group, but bigger and pops out more so it's more clear of what it's applying to. I also wanted to update the cost to be not white on the light green because it was a little hard to read. The dark green works better I think. Then I also updated the rewards on the right and was much happier with this direction! I used the same rounded shape from the top name box and color-coded them with the reward colors to make it more clear. I'm feeling like this is the right direction now, so I feel like I'm getting much closer to a final design with this. It feels more integrated. I'm not 100% on the colors, but maybe after coming back to it later, I'll make the final call on it.

I decided to go with the design on the left more where there's not a white outline. Then I got feedback about the shape of the Birdian symbol working against the design. So I decided to warp the shape around a bit to make it fit better around the cost number. It went through a lot of minor iterations and I ended up changing the Point and Alert symbols too so they would look different. I also added some more negative space to the Birdian and Alert symbols in the rewards to further differentiate them.

Then I went back to design the starter cards and what their top symbol would look like. I didn't want it to be the Alert symbol so I decided to design something new. I was trying to decide what symbol to put in there as well to indicate that it's a starter card. I ended up using eggs/a nest to indicate this.

From there, I wanted to figure out how to indicate that you'd be losing points or Birdians for certain cards. I wanted it to pop out more with a different color so it'd be more obvious that it was subtracting. I decided to use a red background to show this.

So then I finally imported all of these assets into nanDECK and was able to update my final card layout to match the tests I had been doing in Photoshop. I'm happy with how the card design is coming out. It's improved a lot since I started! And this was thanks to a lot of back and forth with Jinny where I would show her my design and she would give me feedback and make suggestions. It was a fun day of really honing in on this design.

And then from there, I did some prints to see how they looked on paper! I'm still a little on the fence about the colors of the symbols on the right. Some of them might not have enough contrast or be too dark (like the group-specific symbols), so I might have to play around with those a bit. And I'm not 100% sure about the negative space when the symbols are so small. So I might adjust a few things, but I'm getting close!

So after printing them out, I decided to redesign some of the group symbols, change colors on a few of them, then recreated all of them using the Pen Tool. Vector art is always a bit of a challenge for me since it's a lot more mechanical than freeform drawing, but I was pretty happy with how most of these turned out.

And from there, I saved a bunch of the parts out. Then I came up with a new idea on how to implement the ability icons on the card. I had to change the color of the ability circle to match the dark background because some of them weren't standing out anyways. So I started playing around with some ideas to make it much more clear that the icon is associated with the text at the top instead of the ability itself. I'm feeling pretty good about this direction! I'm leaning towards the first one pictured below currently. Though it's the most work, I think it's working the best.

 

I ended up exporting all of the pieces to use in nanDECK. Then I test exported a few cards just to make sure everything was looking how I wanted it to. I moved a few things around slightly, but overall am happy with how it turned out!

I made a slight adjustment to the starter cards to use a unique letter instead of all being "S" (since it read a bit as a "5"). This way I could make them more recognizable with which deck they belong to. It also helps for anyone who may be color blind so they have another way to determine without relying on colors. With this, I renamed Dark Dragon to "Zoldith". I'm not 100% on the spelling yet, but I know I want his name to start with a Z at least.

And I did a quick test to see if I wanted to move the cost of the groups on the Linkship Pilot cards to the left where the other cost is to make that a bit more obvious. I couldn't really find a position I liked as much, so I decided not to go with that change though. 

So that's it for this post! I'm making a lot of progress on the card's design and not looking to make huge changes going forward. I'm finally feeling like this design is finalized and happy with how it's coming out. It's always a great feeling when I get to that stage of it feeling official. I still need to do some testing and polish, then I'll make the decision on if it's truly the final design, but I know that I'm very close, if not already there.

CUPdate 93: The Nays Writing & Wiki Organization

One of my favorite parts about having extended stay at home vacations is that I usually end up diving back into The Nays and getting in the zone for writing and developing a bunch of new story moments. During Christmas break, I spent a lot of time re-reading Eventures and then rewriting some. I also worked on writing scripts for the Eventure Trailers that I've been gradually working through.

So for this CUPdate, I'm going to go through the progress I've made on The Nays so far this year!

I ended 2025 by starting rewriting the AV World Eventure. I didn't finish it in one night though, so I ended up finishing the rewrite in 2026 a couple of days later. It technically counts for my 1 solo Eventure of the year written, so that's one goal checked off already! I imagine I'll write more later though.

I also rewrote a lot of The Gek's Nephew Eventure. I usually write all of my Eventures in mIRC, but this one and finishing up AV World actually happened in Google Docs, which was a really weird transition for me. I've always felt a lot more comfortable writing in mIRC because of the commands I have set up, but for anything that involves keeping a lot of existing text and just making edits, I do think the Google Doc method works better. So I'm trying to do whatever feels right for the situation.

While reading through a bunch of Eventures, I also was writing the Eventure Trailer scripts to act as a recap for them. I had a goal in previous years to write more of these and never got far, but I wrote 10+ of them in a week, so I'd say that was pretty good progress. I just got into the habit of writing them after I did a copy edit pass and read through the Eventures. I added a new section at the top of my Google Docs for this so I can quickly read those recaps before starting when I dive back in.

And to start off 2026, I also drew my yearly Cipo drawing. I wanted to find an Eventure that he was in and just draw one of my Eventure drawings for a future Twine, so I found a scene in the Death Eventure to draw that's towards the start of that one.

I also started working on The Nays timeline again. I had an old version but there were so many changes to the story that it was starting to be outdated. So I made it look a little nicer and I've been working from the beginning of the story as I finalize the beginning Eventures to further solidify those dates. I added these dates to the Eventure pages on the Weebly too, so it's easier to see at a glance how much time passes in Eventures.

I've always wanted to make a wiki for The Nays. Every time I brainstorm how to do it or try something, it just doesn't feel right though. I've tried Toyhouse, Notion, Google Docs, Weebly, etc. But I'll spend about a day or few days on it, and then forget about it, or just not maintain it. Though I realized that whenever I want to remember something about a character quickly (whether that's their design, personality, etc.), I always go straight to my Deviant Art account. I've drawn ~600+ profile drawings from my old Nay-A-Day project and submitted it there, so it's really been my go-to place to look for information while I'm writing.

So with that, I decided to expand upon that. Because I'm already looking there and use it as a resource, why not just make that resource better and turn it into my wiki? So one of the few new features I actually like about Deviant Art's new design is that you can upload multiple deviations and add some basic formatting like bullet points and headers without code. This means I can have multiple reference images technically nested within the same deviation so I don't have to go looking for them elsewhere. I could change the main image to the one I want to show while still preserving the original nested within it too. So I started to add profiles to the main characters, adding sections and links whenever necessary. I took a lot of this information from my Weebly pages, but figured this will be an area I'll probably maintain more frequently.

Then I sketched a few storyboards of the AV World Eventure because the story moments were still pretty fresh in my mind. Sometimes it's hard going back to draw Eventure scenes after I wrote it years ago because I have to reimagine some of the scenes and remember where I left off. I tried to stay super rough with these so I could go quicker and just get my rough ideas out there.

So that's how I started the year! While it's not a lot of visual progress, I did do a lot of writing and organizing this time. I'm happy that I finally revisited and spent some time working on The Nays, because I really needed this and missed it a lot.