Feedback on game board design

People at BGG are too Eurocentric to appreciate a true Ameritrash game, so I've decided to ask you folks about a game I'm very close to finishing up. I have the art for the board complete and I'm looking to see if anyone has comments or suggestions on it.

The game's premise is that several generations after a catastrophic event, the world is cooling and the players, villagers from the Yakima Settlement, are forced to move south to escape the freeze. Their goal (initially) is to head to Phoenix, the last refuge for people seeking a peaceful, pseudo-civilized life. The Anarchists want nothing more than to kill and harvest you for your meat and belongings. During the game, you can perform missions for the elders of the cities, become and Anarchist and attempt to bring the downfall of Phoenix, and a variety of other things.

Here's the prototype set - the character sheets are on the upper right side but they're completely different. Note that a pencil (OMG! A PENCIL!) is used to track things rather than a billion chits. The small red circular bits represent Anarchist Patrols that spawn from the red circular areas on the map.


Here's the game board. There may be one last revision regarding the art for the card spaces in the upper right as I'm not entirely keen on the art for the cards, but that remains to be seen.


Any thoughts, suggestions...? You can see some of the cards and whatnot here:
www.boardgamegeek.com/images/thing/75813/beyond-the-fall

Thanks,
Pete

I would wash out the terrain a little. Full contrast maps tend to overpower the board IMHO. Plus the colors are a little too bright and primary. But besides that it looks functional enough

It looks nice! I suppose I'd be interested to see how the location names look in white; contrast is always appreciated on text. It might be a different story printed out in front of me though.

If you don't need the state boundaries for gameplay reasons, you might consider removing them, somehow.

hotseatgames wrote:

It looks nice! I suppose I'd be interested to see how the location names look in white; contrast is always appreciated on text. It might be a different story printed out in front of me though.

I tried white but it's too bright, and I'm going for a "wasteland feel" with the sand and yellow tones.

I'll take a look at the sidebar color; maybe toning that down a bit would be good. Printed on a 16.5"x16.5" print (poster) it looks incredibly nice, but I agree that maybe the yellow should be toned down.

I'm with Chapel about the map. The grid blends in with it, and the presence of the highways on the aerial photograph makes it a little difficult for your eye to track the lines between spaces.

Some of those neon-looking colors are ass ugly, and that yellow sticks out like a sore thumb.

I'm sure you're using that heavy filter on the card pictures because you're trying to obfuscate the fact that it's copyrighted material, but you should either lose it or get rid of the pictures entirely.

There's really not much point in having pictures to look at if they're so blurry you can't make out what the hell they're supposed to be.

Map needs a lot of cleanup--too much extraneous info, e.g. state boundaries. Ain't no states after the Fall, son. Most players will recognize even abstract terrain and coastlines--I don't think you need a sat map here unless it affects play. I want to clean up the orphans in your order of play box ("City Card", "Actions"). Think about rewording there to clean that up ("Draw a card." "Perform an action.") You can get rid of "special location" identifier--it's redundant with playing the game.

Get rid of the articles on the card titles: "The Hermit", "The Gun Store". Adds nothing unless it's a title, like The Humongous. As noted, the card art is garbage. Either toss it entirely or get some photos. Photoshop's Virtual Painter filter doesn't rub off the copyright.

www.publicdomainpictures.net/

public-photo.net/

Good luck with that. Find a photog hobbyist buddy and make them yourself. For Gun Store, you'll need: an abandoned lot, preferably with a shack, some wood clapboards, axle grease to write "GuN StOR" on the clapboard. Done.

Nice looking game. From an art standpoint, I'm going to agree with prior posters. Decrease the saturation of the base map, then it won't be so busy. If the state boundaries don't exist anymore, then erase them. If they're important somehow, you'll need to dash them, or do something to differentiate them from the square grid.

I'm also willing to bet you haven't spent much time out west, either. As someone who lives in the middle of that map, and has been all over this godforsaken depicted area, your city placement is, um, interesting.

I'm willing to look past that sort of thing as game design (Ticket to Ride was famously loose with city placement), but it sort of sticks out for anyone who's travelled around here. "South Lake" in particular is in a very strange place for any kind of civilization. Zoom in a bit on Google Maps and you'll see what I mean.

Is it a coincidence that you put the southern Anarchist zone dead center across the FLDS (fundamentalist polygamist Mormon sect) stronghold of Hildale/Colorado City? That one made me chuckle.

All area-related bitching aside, looks like a fine piece of Ameritrash growing there.

Not Sure wrote:

Is it a coincidence that you put the southern Anarchist zone dead center across the FLDS (fundamentalist polygamist Mormon sect) stronghold of Hildale/Colorado City? That one made me chuckle.

Cool idea! Superflytnt, please change every instance of "Anarchist" in the game material to "Cannibal Mormons."

I would buy a game that had Cannibal Mormons in it.

Dan

Last Alchemist wrote:

I would buy a game that had Cannibal Mormons in it.

Dan

Crossing the desolate wastelands of Mormonia is one of the most harrowing aspects of the Long Walk. Roving bands of Moroni Raiders lure Walkers with promises of water and food, only to be "converted" and served to the flock. Even the Anarchists avoid Mormonia.

I always wanted to be one of the frozen chosen.

Other than the lack of comic sans, the graphic design is fine...

Seriously though, the colors and saturation look fine. I like the saturated hues and am sick of seeing washed out colors in board games. I would go a hue orangier on the yellow to pick up on the blue (like a mustard or ochre but not too much brown.)


So tell me about the gameplay. It looks like you move and resolve encounters. How do you turn Anarch? Do charaters have variable starting powers?

Steve"Avid veturer"Avery

Chapel wrote:

I always wanted to be one of the frozen chosen.

I don't think your sideburns are long enough, Chapel.

You still call your cannibal raiders Anarchists?

I'm not an anarchist but I think that's pretty stupid.