The Final Curtain - Evaluation

Pandemonia has been a labour of love, commitment as well as trials of confusion, concern and self-doubt. To say I have not struggled when it’s come to figuring out what needs to be done when creating a board/card game for the first time, would be horrendous. Being able to admit my shortcomings with this project, although difficult, is arguably just as important as admitting the parts that worked well! So with this evaluation I hope to air some aspects of both, as well as talk about how I aim to continue this project beyond university.

The Good - What Worked Well

Arguably the most terrific outcome with this project has been the sheer upgrade I have had in terms of character creation. The Tarot Characters are testament to this. In this pack there are twenty-two (22) well designed characters with each their own story to tell! This proves that I am able to create, establish a world and build up an idea through constant content creation.

Throughout this project I have had something akin to an awakening in terms of my art style. I’ve claimed in the past that 2 years ago I hadn’t really been confident in myself to create a digital artstyle. Programs like Photoshop or Krita gave me a sense of being overwhelmed when it came to their UI system. But discovering Procreate has been an amazing blessing as it has allowed me to easily pick up the UI, experiment and establish a digital art style I can be happy with.

The Bad - What Worked Badly

Timekeeping has always been a major difficulty in many things for myself. I have a habit of always leaving things until the last day before being majorly concerned with the objective at hand. An issue I have logged is that my productivity is affected by social media interaction as well as being able to immediately access distractions (the issue with having everything on one device in your pocket.) So when I am distracted, I lose track of time and miss chances to focus on work. To combat this for future projects: Avoid social media during working hours, use the computer when it is needed, such as uploading work or typing up updates. Set myself a strict hourly working rota.

The Future - What’s Next?

Well that’s the million pound question really. In terms of Pandemonia, the goal is to continue work on it. I’ve proved that as a concept it can work, but that is a farcry to actually creating a working game with rules and guidelines. So a major objective after university is to continue and get Pandemonia into a stage that can see it advertised on Kickstarter as a product worth crowdfunding! There is always a market for horror, especially mysterious, spooky and as strange as it sounds, traumatic horror. I am confident in this product, I just have to be confident in myself.

But is illustrating board games something I want to do as a career? Not exactly. If Pandemonia takes me down that path and I can have a stable career in creating board/card games, then I will take it. However, the direction I would like to go towards is the game industry. Creating character concepts for an indie game is my number one goal, and I feel finishing Pandemonia would be a fantastic stepping stone towards this, as it shows capability in creating a product, and acts as a form of portfolio for my character work!

With this project in terms of being a university module, I find this chapter closing. If anything the last 2 years has taught me, it is to not be afraid to take a chance on an idea I may have. Push the bounderies and see how far I can go with it.

And I aim to.

Project: Liminal Inspirations - Part 3

Originally Published: 09/12/2020

Arkham Horror

Designed by Richard Launius

Arkham Horror takes the cosmic horror universe originally created by author H.P Lovecraft, and injects it into a board game format set to terrify and bring stress in the form of monsters, bad decisions and madness. Set in the terrifying fictional town of Arkham, Massachusetts during the 1920s, players must investigate, unearth and bury the horrifying awakenings of the Elder Gods.

The party will travel around Arkham, which is conveniently a large map on it’s board. Each location the player visits, a new mystery is uncovered, a familiar weapon discovered or a mind-shattering monster let loose. The main goal being the denial of allowing the selected Elder God’s followers to summon their deity. Lose, and you are set to lose more than your mind.

One of the game's main mechanics is selecting what elder god will terrorise the players. Picking which elder god to play against is arguably one of the most important aspects of the game, as depending on which one the players selects, the game will jump heavily in difficulty, or lower in difficulty. Each elder god comes with their own twist on the gameplay. For example, the picture above has written rules that affect the game through unique concepts.

This is a mechanic we have both agreed needs to be in our core concept. A city of fears governed over prime aspects of fear fits perfectly with having their own ‘God’ card with differing rules and abilities that keep the game fresh and interesting with each playthrough.

Project: Liminal Inspirations - Part 2

Originally Published: 09/12/2020

Dead of Winter

Designed by Jonathan Gilmour and Isaac Vega

Dead of Winter brings what it may be like to survive a zombie apocalypse in the freezing temperatures of an American city in the throes of a harsh winter.

Players take control of survivors within a colony attempting to survive throughout the end of the world as we know it. Zombies shamble the streets and claw their way through your defenses. Whether the walking dead kills you, or the freezing temperatures do, each playthrough is as tense as the last due to an ‘Objective’ element that the game uses to keep the party tense and always guessing who will betray the colony.

Each player is given a hidden objective to accomplish to assure their victory. These can vary from collection of items to protecting and maintaining the colony. But the kicker is that there MAY be a traitor amongst you. This is where the game’s social deduction element kicks in. Did your friend actually add two meal cards to the colony supplies, or did they add trash instead?

A betrayal concept is something we would like to have as a fun core mechanic that can keep each game compelling and fresh. There is a certain enjoyment of trying to pretend to be part of the ‘good guys’ team, in games that is.

Project: Liminal Inspirations

Originally Published: 09/12/2020

Betrayal at House on the Hill

Designed by Bruce Glassco and developed by Bill McQuillan, Mike Selinker, Teeuwynn Woodruff and Rob Daviau.

Betrayal is a personal favourite board game of mine, as it adds so many different elements of horror throughout our history as a race. Ghosts, ghouls, vampires and zombies are some classic tropes that have been mingled in with much more recent horror tropes, aliens, monsters from different dimensions, serial killers and psychological threats. The main premise of Betrayal is that you, the players, are paranormal investigators, explorers, inquisitive minds that have been drawn to the House on the Hill, for whatever unknown reason. Within the house, it is swiftly realised that the very foundations of the building shift and change with each new visit.

Whatever paranormal influence resides in the house, keeps things strange and harrowing for every new visitor. However, exploration of the house brings out the terrifying events, items and omens that the house has been harbouring for far too long. With every Omen discovered, the players fall ever closer to activating the second phase of the game; the Haunt Phase. Within the Haunt Phase, one (or none) player will be informed by the game manual that they have turned against the party for whatever written dark reason. From there, the game becomes a battle of survival against an enemy that was once a friend. Whether the party or the traitor wins is entirely down to how the players play their roles.A powerful choice for Betrayal was having a board that changed with each playthrough. Having a deck of cardboard tiles that had rooms that could be placed in their respective floors (Basement, Ground Floor, Upper Floor) but have a different placement with each time you play, is an interesting and refreshing mechanic that always kept me invested and interested to see how the board looked each time I played.

This ever-changing board is something we would like to use as a basis for Project: Liminal. With a premise such as ‘a city of fears that is infinite and ever-changing’ we both agreed we needed a board design that keeps the players interested and constantly planning what they will do and where they will go next.

UPDATE: As of the current ideas we are running with, we don’t have intentions to continue with a modular board as a core concept. However, we do feel that we might be able to inject that idea in further down that line as a possibility.

What is this project? - Part 3

Originally Published: 08/12/2020

Liminal is a story driven world created from fear. What once started as a small, brief creation of a utopian based city for monsters, quickly developed over time to become an infinitesimal sized city created from the fears of humanity. Every fear that has ever been catalogued throughout our history has a place here within this liminal space between worlds. Throughout the world of Liminal, there will be story elements that will help the players understand why these fears and spaces are to not be taken lightly, and how powerful they have been over our history and future.  

Storywise, you the players are individuals trapped within this otherworldly city. Working with each other to complete specifically chosen mission objectives, you must traverse this haunting expanse, explore, discover, fight and face your fears.  

The Graveyard District, a location we all visit in the end. - Artwork by Me, 2021

The Flooded District, a location difficult to escape. - Artwork by Me, 2021

However, this city is lorded over by prime examples of specific fears, Barons of Phobias. For example, one such Baron is an entity called the ‘Hierophant’, a rich, religious icon of hierarchy within society. This character is meant to portray a fusion of Plutophobia​​, a fear of wealth, and Religiophobia​​, the fear of religion. 

The Tyrant, Baron of the Royal District - Artwork by Me, 2021

The Monarch, Baron of the Hive District - Artwork by Me, 2021

With these Barons, I want to be able to tell stories of real world problems that people suffer from in terms of world events, so with the Hierophant, they are meant to portray the constant uphill struggle of the lower class against the upper class. Religion and monetary gain have throughout history had quite the connection to each other, so we want to build off of those themes and imageries.

What is this project - Part 2

Originially Published: 08/12/2020 Blogger Post

In terms of what style of game we are wanting to create, it is currently a big toss up of equal parts 'social deception' and 'objective play'.

As previously mentioned, myself and Adam have quite the history of playing social deception games that almost always pit our paranoias against each other. We very much want to have that element of paranoia between players. 'Are my friends helping with this objective, or are they plotting our demise?'

Among Us: A Social Deception Game, in Space! - Created by InnerSloth LLC and PlayEveryWare.

Project Winter: A Social Deception Survival Game, in a frozen landscape! - Created by Other Ocean Interactive, Other Ocean Group

Luckily such games like Among Us and Project Winter on Steam have helped the rise of Social Deception games amongst low tier and high tier profile Twitch streamers and YouTubers, so now feels like a good year to get involved in making something with that level of theme and play to it.

What is this project?

Orginially Published: 13/10/2020 Blogger Post: What is Project: Liminal?

Over the last 5 years, I have had the luck and opportunity to sit down with close friends and new faces, chat and have a couple drinks whilst playing board games. There is something about boardgames that speaks to me on a personal enjoyment level, being able to simply shut off for a bit and focus on time with friends and family, it's amazing! That being said, as of last year I have been tossing up the idea of actually sitting down and illustrating an idea co-created with my friend, Adam Wojcik. We as a pair have a history of playing social deception games, games that have an element of survival and betrayal as it's core mechanic.

Arkham Horror, Werewolf, Betrayal at House on the Hill and Dead of Winter. There is something so enjoyable to me about trying to keep a straight face at the table, not giving away any of my schemes and intentions within the game.

The humour, banter and threats that can come from these style of games has always been one of my favourites, card games a close second (although I personally am not very good at playing combination based card games, but that doesn't stop me playing!) just for the sheer infinite hours of enjoyment that can come from them. This is where the first steps of the planning process came to; did we want to make a social co-operative horror game, or a combination card game, similar to Magic: The Gathering or the Pokemon TCG?

Pokemon TCG - Published by The Pokemon Company

Magic: The Gathering - Published by Wizards of the Coast

Believing our skills could be more beneficial in making a social co-operative horror game, we sat down over Discord and agreed that option is our best one. However, that won't stop us looking into making a card game if this idea gets off the ground later down the line! So, with this plan in motion we took our respective seats at the creation table, I was to focus on illustrating the game, and Adam is to focus at fleshing out the mechanics, the 'hows and whys' the game works the way it does.

Channeling an idea I had in my first year of university, I focused on a world called 'Pandemonia', a Utopia for 'Fears'. Here in Pandemonia, the phobias and fears of the real world are birthed into horrific personifications, for example, when the first Human discovered the savagery of a Wolf, in Pandemonia, the Human's image of this wolf was created and now rampages through the city streets, causing fear in those trapped there. This is just a brief explanation for now, but as I work through this idea I will be returning to this blog to keep track of anything and everything 'Liminal'.

Pandemonia Welcomes You To Face Your Fears...

Talking about Audiences.

This entire project has been a labour of love for all things horror based and something I’ve wanted to inject a heavy dose of curiousity and story with my characters. When it comes to target audience, who am I aiming to attract with this project?

To figure this question out, I have to look at one of the most important influences and inspirations I’ve used...

The Magnus Archives: Make your statement, face your fear. - Written and performed by, Jonathan Sims. Directed and produced by Alexander J Newall

Whilst listening to the Magnus Archives, I made a realisation that a lot of the topics that are brought up in the show are about trauma, phobias to the extreme and heavily riddled with anxiety, paranoia and mystery. Pandemonia has always been a world of monsters that we as people create to embody our fears and phobias, very much the same as TMA. So with this understanding, I tried to understand who would want to enjoy content revolving around trauma, monsters and overcoming them.

I can only speak for myself when it comes to my experiences with listening to the Magnus Archives, so ultimately this is from one source and observations I’ve made from looking at the TMA fandom.

Curiousity is something I consider to be the strongest trait when it comes to anything I listen, read or watch. If I find myself wanting to know more about the world, why these events are happening or what monster is around the corner, I find myself enjoying the content more. Coupled with a love for dark exploration through the minds of humanity, such as overcoming trauma where the monsters are representations of psychological issues that affect the creator/characters. I love the stories that are about trying to overcome an abstract form of a psychological problem, hence the idea to create a world of monsters born from phobias.

That being said I am not the only one. Many fans of the Magnus Archives enjoy the story for numerous reasons, but one main reason is that from the beginning the creator, Jonathan Sims, stated that this is not a story with a happy ending. I enjoy stories that are heavy hitting, full of adversity and overcoming problems, but sometimes a happy ending can utterly negate the true horror elements I enjoy in a story.

If I had to give a title to the audience I am aiming for, it would be for those that enjoy the dark and gritty that horror can reveal about humanity.

Pandemonia: Face Your Fears - Game Prototype Box

This entire project seemed to have taken a massive swerve towards seeing what was originally just an idea, turning into an absolute possibility of making this a complete product.

I hadn’t thought it possible to create a box design that managed to work with the overall design ideas I was having. However, Mark was able to help me fashion this wonderfully mysterious box. This style of box is a form of Japanese book/box case making. It makes use of two lids, an outer and an inner lid. This was the main aspect of the design that helped me choose it as the right style of box I wanted for the project. The two lids allowed me to add some mystery with each one you opened, the outer lid revealing a burnt parchment style description of the game’s world, followed by the inner lid showing several burnt scraps giving off cryptic descriptions of the barons within the game.

The contents of the box, all cards I had printed to show off the proof of concept, proved to be quite difficult to remove from the box, so we both came up with this ribbon like pull-cord you can see in the 5th picture. This allowed ease of access. The two smaller cards also have a piece of greyboard that can be lifted upwards that allows ease of access to pull the cards out.

Pandemonia: Face Your Fears - Original Tarot Character Concepts (Part 2)

Originally I wanted to create some mysterious characters that were affected by terrifying entities. This rapidly evolved to fit into this new world I was creating called ‘Pandemonia’, so when I realised I could split the 22 cards into 11 each, two factions sprung up in the form of the ‘Barons’ and the ‘Dramatis Personae’.

Pandemonia: Face Your Fears - Original Tarot Character Concepts (Part 1)

I just thought I’d add the original concept designs that had started this whole project off. Mainly to show where my art direction had started off, and to use these original concepts as a timeline. 

Pandemonia: Face Your Fears - Box Cover Designs

Illustrating a card game/board game has been an interesting and fun project over the last year. One element of designing this idea that utterly escaped me, was thinking if I could design the box the game could be stored in.

When it comes to visual designs on boxes, cards, objects I find myself being more taken in by the product if the overall illustration is fairly basic. Sometimes when I see a product with too much going on in terms of illustration, I find myself lost trying to see it all. Whereas with a simplistic design I can see exactly what the creator wants to show.

I tried to emulate a basic design for the first image, using this as a chance to experiment with a more painted style, as you can see.

The second image was using a scratchy style brush. (previously used to draw the pictures on the text sides of the event deck cards) Having used this style of brush before to create monster themed content, I knew that I could get the eerie and grim look I was after.

The third and fourth images are side panels. I wanted them to be both somewhat similar, but the character in the middle to be different, so not to be too repetive in the overall design.

Pandemonia: Face Your Fears - Baron Boss Cards

One inspiration I’ve taken fully from the horror boardgames ‘Arkham Horror’ & ‘Eldritch Horror’ is their Boss Cards.

When you start up a game of Arkham/Eldritch Horror, you and the rest of the players must decide which of the elder gods that you want to try and beat. Each one has a varying degree of difficulty and challange to them. One may alter the board by spawning specific hard to beat monsters at specific points in the game, whilst another may have a distinctly shorter time frame in which you can beat it. I’m a big fan of being able to choose from a small list of bosses to fight in boardgames, purely because it adds that element of replayability.

Here with my designs I wanted to emulate that as best as I could, but without putting heavy amounts of text and symbols on the card. In keeping with Arkham/Eldritch Horror, there is a large depiction of the bosses, as well as the names. In the final printed versions, these designs would include what each boss brings to the table, as well as the fear they are themed around.

Pandemonia: Face Your Fears - District Location Cards (Original & Final Designs)

When I first started getting designs down on Procreate, I opted to try something entirely new to me. Landscape paintings are something I’ve wanted to learn and make use for character concepts, just to add that element of more going on in the worlds I make. Seeing as I was making a world entirely buried under a mountain and in ever expanding city, I felt the need to get some landscape concepts done! The first two images are what I was left with when I first started. As I progressed and transitioned between the two, I managed to gain some sort of understanding in the process of create a landscape of this style (Instagram artists have been quite helpful with this element of learning.)

The second pair of images are the final outcomes. Here I managed to take the same metal tentacle border I’ve used throughout previous designs (tarot characters, event decks, etc) and keep that theme running. Due to the size I had previously done the originals in, I had to crop them down to size to fit the frame dimensions, so there is a bit of the original pieces lost in this transition, but not enough to make a major issue from it.

As for the last image, this is taking what I had done for the text sides of the event decks and making it less ‘this is a print poster’ and more of a ‘this was a rush drawing by someone in a hurry’. The bloodied red ink with dotted lines to keys, an eye creature and ‘X marks the spot’ elements give this side of the card a treasure hunt feeling to it, which in some regard is what the players will be doing when it comes to finding parts of a key to escape the city.

Pandemonia: Face Your Fears - Event Cards (Text Side)

These designs were unexpectedly quite fun to create. There was an issue I had early on with the project on how I wanted to show the text side of the decks of cards players would draw from, did I want it flashy and full of text, or simple and stylised to each associated district. Towards the end of the final outcome, I managed to create an old, dirty looking parchment background that fit perfectly with this narrative I had in my head.

I wanted each card to feel somewhat like posters and newspaper clippings from the 1800s. That blocked font meant to guide the eye, but inbetween or upfront is a striking image/character/product to focus on. I believe I managed to capture that old timey feel to them, whilst adding the border from my tarot character designs worked to keep the image in frame.

Pandemonia: Face Your Fears - Tarot Character Cards (Part 3)

Pandemonia: Face Your Fears - Tarot Character Cards (Part 2)

Very early on with this series, I realised that as part of the story I was writing, I had two groups that were connected to each other in specific ways. These groups were ‘The Barons’ and ‘The Dramatis Personae’ (The Characters of the Play).

The Barons are these twisted yet very real interpretations of fears they represent. They are considered to be governing entities within the expanding city of fears, so their rule is absolute and devestating for humans. The Dramatis Personae on the other hand are scattered individuals that found their own way to the expanding city of fears either by accident, fate or as a result of their actions above ground. Each one is affected by a respective Baron, and takes traits and design elements from them.