Artist Diary: (Not Really) Reshaping the City in Suburbia

I should probably start with a quote from Suburbia designer Ted Alspach: "I'm a huge fan of SimCity." Guess what: Me too! I first played the game on the C64 and later on my brother's DOS PC, so I was really thrilled when Hanno Girke from Lookout Games mentioned a game covering this specific topic might be one of the releases for 2012.

Lookout for my part

My part at Lookout is on one hand doing illustrations and graphic design for in-house productions and on the other hand helping out with graphic issues when and where needed. In most cases this means preparing the box for the German version and updating the rules with the translated text. 2011/12 was quite different as both big-box releases from Lookout – Suburbia and Snowdonia – were collaborations in terms of illustrations and graphic design.

In the case of Suburbia a rather good looking prototype – and to be honest, not really a prototype any more – already existed. The game could have been published in that state and nobody would have complained. But Hanno asked me to help out a little bit since some aspects of the material could lead to production issues. All the buildings were drawn by Ollin Timm and when I saw the tiles my first reaction was: I don't want to change the illustrations at all; they fit perfectly and deliver the right perspective on the city-building topic! And since the prototype (okay, I keep calling it prototype) was already tested so many times, I did not want to turn the layout upside down.

Keep in mind what we can and can't do

So my approach was to look at the material production-wise, and there is one golden rule – well, it's more of a must-do-or-we-won't-print-it rule: All important information (text, icons) has to be at least 3mm away from the edge where the cutters will cut the cardboard. It's simply in the production process that these inaccuracies could happen. They shouldn't – and normally the punch pieces are off between 0.5 and 1.4mm – but they could and sometimes do happen, and since we know that, we had to work with it.

Prototype and final tiles: The dark border marks the 3mm secure-zone

When you look at the pieces from the prototype you see that they already had a neutral border around the edges. The only thing in the 3mm-range-of-death was the name – and the name was written in white, which brings us to the next topic: Black-plate-change. When printing various languages at the same time it makes sense (i.e., saves costs and reduces workload) to use only black color for text. By doing this, a language can be changed by changing only the printing plate for the color black, which means that you don't have to create four color plates (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black) for every single language since the first three of them are the same for all languages.

The black parts of the same tile in all three languages of the first print-run

When you look at the backsides of the tiles, you might notice that the font is white. So what's the deal here? It's a simple trick: The black font is not changed but instead the black area around the font is changed. That's quite easy to do, but is a nice touch to "play" with the whole black-plate-change thingy.

And the black parts of the backsides – the white font is just negative black

But back to the title of the building tiles: What I basically did was rearrange the various elements just a little bit. The name is now on the upper half and the lower area is reserved for the functions of the buildings. Even the icons are really close (building types) or identical (restaurant, airport) to the prototype. The biggest challenge was finding colors that were distinguishable and (even more important) that Ted, Hanno and developer Dale Yu liked.

Some other tiles with the 3mm secure-zone (this time highlighted in red)

A board to serve

So approximately 467 color-variations later the tile design-update was done and we could focus on the other elements like the game boards and the cover. Even though I really like the unique look of the triangular pieces, they were not intended from the beginning. The problem was that the seven tiles that should be placed on or next to the game-board were too long for the size determined by the box (square Ticket to Ride size). So we could have made a foldable game-board (which would have led to sky-rocketing production costs) or think of another way. And that's how the idea of using the diagonal for the tiles was born. I've done a similar thing with the board of Taschkent (coming out in 2012 from Mücke Spiele) where we had to put a defined number of cards on a board. They wouldn't have fit on the board either, so I put them diagonally on the square game board.

I believe that the triangular shape gives Suburbia a unique look. Visually I tried to keep them low-profile so that they wouldn't compete with the tiles; that's why they re-use the color scheme of the box: A light blue with a discreet skyline in the background. In an earlier version the box and the boards were in a dark violet-bluish tone, but that simply was too heavy! The smaller triangles don't have to be used since they are only storage boards, but I personally prefer it when I have a place for everything.

Since the three game boards are placed directly next to each other on the punch board, the two smaller boards need a blue border. (3mm anyone?) But if you turn them over, you'll have them without the border. A matter of taste.

Cover-up!

The cover was another topic that took more time than planned. Hanno suggested that we might use a slightly different approach than all the other city building games. (Are there so many out there?) Anybody recall the billboard for the Lyon Estates in Back to the Future? Just Google the term.

The first draft was VERY close to the original billboard

First, the idea was to show a construction site in the background and the finished skyline of the town only on the billboard, but that somehow didn't work out the way I pictured it. Even worse, the family on one of the earlier versions looked a little bit scary. Maybe it was the 1960s vibe, or the zombie grin on the kids' faces, but it somehow was too much.

Suburb of the Dead – or something like that

But we all really liked the idea of a picture in the picture, so what I did was reduce the elements until the overall look was clear and simple enough. The kids had to go, but when you look at it closely you can see the boy on the ad. Ted pointed out that it has the feeling as if the couple is looking into their own future – look at the color of the clothes – so we somehow came back to our initial inspiration: time traveling. I really like the overall feel of the cover: It's friendly and full of clichés, and we have elements of the game like the different buildings, airplanes, lakes and cars.

Some variants of the box; the creepy kids are still there – you just can't see them anymore

For the bottom of the box, I divided the text into three separate parts. I really like it when the bottom of the box delivers a bit more than just a thematic context (and tons of legal info), so Ted adjusted the text and now we have THE GAME, THE MECHANICS and THE GOAL. The picture of the material shows a part of a city and not the whole material. I wanted to focus on that because I believe that these tiles are the core element; they literally make the game. In a panoramic view, all the specific game elements that may have attracted gamers would have been lost. Take the box, turn it around, and you can see what the Freeway is doing and the Heavy Factory and the Warehouse; it's hopefully a little bit like opening the box. Normally I would go with a 3D shot of the whole material, but these clever tiles deserve a closer look.

The backside of the box

The last items I want to cover – since Ted mentioned them in his designer diary – are the player aids. Ted was (and hopefully still is) very happy with them; I'm not 100% sure why because I took more or less all the information Ted had on his prototype-player-aids and updated it with the final visuals – nothing more. But I suspect he likes them so much because they illustrate how well the different parts visually work together: the light-blue background gives enough "room" for the tiles and their colors, and everything looks polished and clear.

Both sides of the player aids – clean and clear, just like your favorite suburb

All in all, it was really great working on the game. The feedback I got from Ted, Dale and Hanno helped me to find the (hopefully) right balance in terms of graphic design. Finally ... did I already mention that I'm a huge fan of ~~SimCity~~ Suburbia.

Klemens Franz