"Apocalypse Road is a race game using the Thunder Alley/Grand Prix engine. Players attempt to score points by crossing the finish line (somewhat like roller derby) and by eliminating opposing cars. The first team to 15 points wins the event and gets a double portion of foodstuffs as a reward."
Great idea, but FUCK ALMIGHTY....can GMT hire a mother fucking graphic designer? Or anybody that knows a single...goddamned...THING...about art/design!?!? They make SO many great titles that COULD be enjoyed by tons of people except all of their games are stuck in the mid 1970s in terms of art and graphic design.
Seriously...look at this:
How did someone look at this and say, "Yeah...looks great. Get the P500 ready to rock!"? I get how this shit was acceptable 10 years ago, but it really isn't in 2017.
How did someone look at this and say, "Yeah...looks great. Get the P500 ready to rock!"? I get how this shit was acceptable 10 years ago, but it really isn't in 2017.
No kidding. That looks like the title screen to the best game I never got the chance to play on my Commodore 64.
Thunder Alley was great. Grand Prix was...good, and interesting in many ways, but less obviously "fun". I don't think I want to get into their idea of combat racing. The nature of the core card play doesn't really scream explosions and missiles and cars spinning out of control.
I think we need more info. As already stated, the graphic design/art direction is lackluster at best. The description doesn't tell those who have yet to play thunder alley what makes this compelling and I suspect even then there are doubts.
The theme sounds great, but their ad doesn't do it any sort of justice.
As a North Carolina native, the track in that banner ad looked super familiar. Turns out I was right: it's the shuttered North Wilkesboro Motor Speedway, maybe the most iconic of the dead tracks from the halcyon days of stock car racing.
By the way, here's the original photo that they lazily fucked with Photoshop filters and turned into a shitty banner ad. Anyone wanna wager if they cleared it with the copyright owner? They were smart to dick with it just enough so that a matching photo wouldn't come up on Google Image Search.
GMTs current Art Director, Rodger MacGowan, is waaay old school and has made a practice of recycling his own artwork for years. They recently posted box cover art for a game that I found was used for the fourth time, going back to the 80s. Barring recycling, quick and dirty photo shop is another item in his bag of tricks.
The good news is is that the components inside the box are almost always in the hands of someone far more competent and/or original than MacGowan.
Ignoring the blatant misuse of copyrighted material for a second, the sad thing is, it doesn't cost much money to commission good original artwork nowadays. There are tons of freelancers out there who work relatively cheaply; that's why you see a lot of Kickstarted board games from first-time publishers that somehow have pretty good artwork. For an established company like GMT to rip existing copyrighted photos off the internet and smack a few Photoshop filters on them is just, I dunno. "Lazy" is putting it charitably.