Project Summary
Crafty Castaways is a 3-4 player competitive card game where players aim to be the first castaway to escape a deserted island. They do so by completing tool patterns with island tiles, awarding them points and new abilities. Players will soon map out entire islands with these tiles, but they must be cautious, as other players might make use of the tiles they've placed to craft their own tools.
Our game was created by a team of 4 Game Design students, and consisted of many stages of development before landing on what it is today. It was designed to be a quick-to-learn party game that sparks chaos and laughter, all while remaining compelling after multiple playthroughs. Each of us played a big part in designing the mechanics of the game and I was responsible for creating all the artwork shown.
Tool Cards
Tiles
Rulebook
Process
This game started as a school project, and was a result of our team wanting to create an emergence rich game that was easy to pick up. Back then the game existed under a different theme and name.
In this first rendition of the game, our theme revolved around wizards battling for resources to cast spells. After conducting many playtests across demographics, it was clear that we had created some very compelling gameplay mechanics. However there were still many improvements to be made. The first one we took on was developing a new theme for the game. While wizards were visually appealing, the actions players made didn't quite hit that theme. I began branching out and testing new themes.
One of the most prominent ideas for a theme was the idea of construction equipment, where players raced to build bigger and bigger tools using shared spare parts shared. Before moving forward, we conducted focus testing purely on this new theme of construction. We did this by explaining the core gameplay of the game, and asking testers whether they felt the theme showed matched what they had just been described.
What we received was testers imagining a much more whimsical theme, especially since our game was described to be light-hearted and approachable. Construction was not the right fit for this, and so I went back to the drawing board and began creating a new theme based on these points.
I had created this render with the theme of cave men stick figures finding themselves in unfortunate situations. It resonated very well with the team, and we decided to go with the slightly altered theme of castaway stick figures finding themselves in unfortunate situations.
After creating the first few renders, it was clear that this was the direction we wanted to take the game in. My goal for creating these renders was to make simple yet eye-catching scenes that players would enjoy looking at as they held them in their hands. I messed around a lot with perspective to achieve this and draw player's focus to the tool the card was representing.
When it came to designing the UI for each card, I took into account readability, hierarchy, and color to create compelling cards that serve a variety of purposes. The pattern side of these cards are meant to be visible from players sitting on opposite ends of a table, and hence I needed to ensure that both the pattern and point number stood out and provided all the information related to the card. The other side of the card is only needed to be viewed by the holder, and therefore I could afford including my detailed renders and text.
The last thing I needed to design was the tiles that would make up the physical gameplay components of the game. Originally, these were ingredients meant to be arranged in specific ways. However I found that this broke some of the game's immersion, as placing multiple of these together didn't depict anything more than a set of random ingredients placed in interesting patterns.
I looked at other games that handled tile based gameplay, specifically Catan and Scythe. Drawing from these inspirations, I wanted to create a series of island segments that players would place together to form a large land mass. Giving the impression that they are revealing/exploring this deserted island one tile at a time
