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My name is Galen Ciscell. By way of introduction, I am a Ph.D. candidate in Sociology and an avid gamer of all types (role-playing, video, board, and physical), though board games are my passion. I found my way into the hobby when I was introduced to Shadows over Camelot at the KublaCaon game convention in San Francisco.
When Eric asked me to submit a designer diary for Atlantis Rising, I was initially a bit stumped since I've covered the design process of the game fairly extensively in my own set of posts on the Atlantis Rising forums:
-----• Design Journal #1: A Game for Galen
-----• Design Journal #2: Risk and Reward
-----• Design Journal #3: The Mystical Isle
-----• Design Journal #4: The Councilors of Atlantis
-----• Design Journal #5: Atlanteans and Athenians
-----• Design Journal #6: The Difficulty with Difficulty
-----• Design Journal #7: Forbidden Knowledge
-----• Design Journal #8: How Misfortunate
-----• Design Journal #9: An Influential Design
So, with Eric’s blessing, I decided to focus this diary on the development of the game rather than its design, focusing on how the game changed once it was accepted for publication. I am hopeful that my description of the process will be interesting to casual readers and informative to those of you looking to follow the traditional path of selling your game to a publisher to distribute (as opposed to using Kickstarter or self-publishing).
While there an countless aspects of bringing a game from prototype to publication, in this diary I will focus on two: art direction and production issues.
Art Direction
Atlantis Rising is my first published design, so I had no real idea what to expect from the process after Zev from Z-Man Games accepted the game for publication. One thing I quickly learned is that most game publishers (including Z-Man) are very small operations (like 1-3 people). This meant that I quickly became the de facto art director for the project. Unfortunately, I have no training in the field of art direction, so while I often had a perfectly clear image in my mind of what I wanted the game to look like, translating that image into direction for our graphic designer and illustrator, Karim Chakroun, was a huge challenge. Of course, sometimes I didn't even know what I wanted, which was a whole different problem!
For example, this is the first sketch of the box cover art I received from Karim:
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I told him I liked it a lot and suggested a few tweaks, which he incorporated in his next draft:
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After receiving this image, however, Zev and I tossed around a few more ideas for possible changes until I came up with something completely new, albeit something I had been envisioning for some time, which I asked Karim to illustrate:
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The original thought was also to have the island actually rising out of the ocean, drawn to the heavens by the beam of light at its center, water rolling off its sides and into the ocean in massive waterfalls. This would give us a little different image than the traditional "Atlantis sinking beneath the waves" illustration.
Zev concurred that this was the way to go and I sent Karim this sketch::strip_icc()/pic1392256.jpg)
Karim was understandably confused and a bit frustrated as this is not at all what we has been discussing, but graciously rolled with the punches and after some discussion about specifics (replacing the tidal waves with the whirlpool, for instance), sent back his first draft of what would become the final box cover art:
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This was what I had imagined, and this vision did eventually become the final box art cover for Atlantis Rising – and it looks great!
But you can see what a long and needlessly complicated process that was for Karim. Had I told him from the beginning what I wanted and provided an accompanying sketch, the process would have taken half the time or less. I learned a great deal from this first experience. While it still took me some time to figure out how to properly provide direction on other illustrations, this process really helped me understand where Karim was coming from. (He let me know it, too!)
As we moved deeper into the project the next step was the illustrations for the councilor cards, perhaps one of the most challenging aspects of the entire process, primarily because I wasn't really sure what "style" I wanted for them. Karim would sketch something and I would offer a couple tweaks, then go completely in another direction.
Finally we settled on Karim showing me very initial sketches, including various poses, for the councilors, so that he wasn't putting in hours of work on something just to have me literally send him back to the drawing board. For example, here are the sketches I received for the Champion; by adding just a few details each iteration rather than jumping straight to a finished product, we saved a lot of time in the long run.
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After we were on the same page for the councilors' "look", I drafted written descriptions for all of the councilors, which Karim translated into finished illustrations. For example, from my written direction:
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General Direction: All Atlanteans have white eyes with no irises or pupils. The general style of the character illustrations should be a bit overexaggerated, like the character cards in The Adventurers or the box cover of Isla Dorada. Almost cartoon-like, but still painted illustrations. Bold lines and colors throughout.
The Explorer (Male): Dark skinned, bald, all-white eyes. He is bare-chested (and very broad-chested) and Atlantean tattoos cover his exposed skin. His build is similar to Kale from Sinbad. A broad-chested man with Roman-style arm braces, inlaid with Atlantean runes instead of Roman heraldry. He holds a map in his right hand. His left hand is raised to eye level so that he can examine his "compass" – a sundial with glowing Atlantean runes instead of Roman numerals. His legs are covered to the knees with a white toga skirt (somewhat soiled from exploring) held up by a yellow sash which covers a portion of his mid-section. One of his legs protrudes from the toga-skirt. He wears stylized Roman boots. He wears a backpack that is very simplistic looking.
Karim was able to produce an illustration very close to the final version of the Explorer:The Explorer (Male): Dark skinned, bald, all-white eyes. He is bare-chested (and very broad-chested) and Atlantean tattoos cover his exposed skin. His build is similar to Kale from Sinbad. A broad-chested man with Roman-style arm braces, inlaid with Atlantean runes instead of Roman heraldry. He holds a map in his right hand. His left hand is raised to eye level so that he can examine his "compass" – a sundial with glowing Atlantean runes instead of Roman numerals. His legs are covered to the knees with a white toga skirt (somewhat soiled from exploring) held up by a yellow sash which covers a portion of his mid-section. One of his legs protrudes from the toga-skirt. He wears stylized Roman boots. He wears a backpack that is very simplistic looking.
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This process was repeated for the components of the cosmic gate, although with one additional hiccup: Some of the components had to be renamed in order to make them concrete objects that Karim could illustrate. For instance, the component now titled "Quantum Resonator" was previously "Quantum Engineering" – a rather abstract concept to illustrate! In total, nine cards were changed.
Lesson Learned: If you find yourself doing the art direction for your game, know what you want ahead of time, communicate that clearly to your artist both verbally and, if possible, visually, and work with your artists from the beginning to realize your vision.
Production Issues
Before getting into the physical aspects of production, I want to briefly mention the development that the game play itself went through after being accepted from publication. Specifically, Zev suggested the difficulty levels based on drawing the components necessary to win from different decks. I took the idea and ran with it – and what an improvement it has been over the previous method of determining difficulty. In addition to being a better method, it also allowed me to design nine more components – there were only ten to begin with – and add more replayability to the game!
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The Stabilizer originally cost one of each resource;
one or more copies were added to the Blueprint to increase the difficulty.
Game play aside, several aspects of the physical layout of the game also changed from the prototype to the final version. First, the premium bits I had used for resources were transformed into cubes (although there was some discussion of going with cardboard tokens instead). I expected this, due to the prohibitive costs of producing the game with metal chunks for Atlantium, transparent plastic for crystals, etc. One aspect of the prototype I lobbied to see carried over into the production copy, however, was the glass beads that represent mystic energy. Since they are such an integral part of the game, I wanted them to retain their weight and smooth texture.
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I expected the resources to change, but a few other things changed that I did not expect – most importantly, the board itself. The board was originally created from hexes (as you can see here) arranged to form the sections of the island. I had expected the final version to look something like this:
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However, as Karim pointed out, there was no particular reason to use hexes and, in fact, the set-up of the hexes was somewhat confusing when it came time to determine which tile was next-closest to the shoreline. He proposed creating the island from tiles that flooded "straight up" toward the center. Zev and I were both skeptical at first, but when we saw what Karim had in mind we were convinced:
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One change that surprised me was the suggestion that the component cards become tiles instead of cards. Punchboards are relatively easy to create, and since we were doing them for the island tiles anyway, why not include the components as well, asked Zev? While initially resistant to the idea, I came to realize its merit in terms of the heft and feel of the components. However, for reasons outlined below, we did ultimately go with cards for the components of the cosmic gate.
A final change was the composition of the Knowledge deck, which was originally comprised of forty cards. As you can read elsewhere (or learn from any game manufacturer), when printing cards, 110 is a key number, because it is the number of cards that will fit on a printing sheet. In order to make the card count for the game fit neatly onto a printing sheet, Jean-Francois from Filosofia Édition asked me to trim the knowledge deck down to 31 cards – a daunting task initially, but one which ultimately became an opportunity to add even more variety to the Knowledge cards by pruning some of the duplicate cards and adding in a few unique card designs previously planned for promotional cards, like "Alchemical Formula" and "Raze the Land".
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While there were many other changes from the prototype to the finished version, to cover everything that changed would take more space than I have here.
Lesson Learned: Be willing to adapt and experiment with new ideas you hadn't considered. Publishers and artists know the business and know what is doable and what could be improved!
Conclusion
Publishing a game is a much larger process than playtesting and prototyping until the game play is just right. Art, components, product specifications, and the demands of the industry all come into play. While getting Atlantis Rising ready for publication was a lot of work, it was also immensely rewarding. Getting fabulous new illustrations from Karim in my inbox every morning and being so intimately involved in shaping the look and feel of the game I designed was an amazing experience. I just hope you enjoy the finished product as much as I enjoyed making it!
Galen Ciscell
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