Hi Everyone,
In today’s Fortuna Friday, I’ll give you an update on what’s going on behind the scenes to move the game forward towards production. And, for the first time, I will be asking YOU for your input on how the game moves forward!
But first up, and in fact very much not behind the scenes, are our new Facebook and Instagram pages. Some of you are already following Fortuna on the socials, but if you’re not, please show some love to the game there so that these can reach as many people as possible.
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61575229722407
https://www.instagram.com/fortuna_cards
With the creation of the socials, the newsletter, and the website, we’ve got the essentials of our marketing set-up in place. The next stage will be growing out following by connecting with groups of like-minded people.
Another exciting aspect in progress is DESIGN. I’m currently in conversation with talented designers and illustrators and commissioning samples which I am excited to share with you guys soon. Once the design of the game is complete, we can proceed with the production of the prototype, which can be shared online, sent to reviewers, etc. The artwork itself will also be an important way to engage new players and is necessary for setting up our Kickstarter pre-launch page.
There are also a few legal questions to resolve. Kickstarter money counts as income and is taxed, so it’s necessary to set up some kind of legal vessel that can carry Fortuna onto the high seas of the open market. We therefore need to set up as a business and do so before incurring significant costs. Fortuna is a design-heavy game with lots of individual illustrations, so design is definitely going to fall into this category! We’re not going to try to Defraud the Customs House this time around and are ensuring everything is nice and above board.
Perhaps some of you (like me) are quite attached to the design of the current prototype. Why do we need a new one? Well, most obviously, because we don’t own the rights to use most of the images in a commercial setting. Most of the designs are licensed from Canva, but we can’t trademark these designs, as they already belong to someone else. The characters, meanwhile, are drawn with AI, and whilst this is fine to create place-holder images, it’s not appropriate for the final product. Apart from putting us in a legal grey area, I would rather support very talented humans than moderately talented robots. A new, unified design is going to make the game more beautiful and immersive than ever – watch this space!
This brings me to my QUESTION FOR YOU. Currently the Fortuna aesthetic is quite minimalist, based on black-and-white line drawings with a fairly sparing use of colour. This was not originally a conscious choice, but a complete accident. Right at the outset of the Fortuna journey, my highly talented friend, Sara Caputo, offered to sketch a bit of concept art. Straight away, I loved these images – they totally captured the irreverent, resourceful, slightly anarchic spirit of the game. Sara’s “Coffee House Gossip” has since become my go-to image for game promotion! (see above). However, being a person very much in demand, Sara didn’t have time to colour the images at first, so I decided for the first prototype to simply match these line drawings in all the other images I found.
Up till now, the aesthetic has stuck through every subsequent prototype. For many of us, it’s become a signature feature of the game. It also makes the game pretty unique – which may turn out to be a good or a bad thing! On the other hand, more colour could be more attention grabbing, and that’s going to be important going forward as we try to get more gamers on board. Our design will definitely have some colour to aid gameplay, but a full colour design including full-colour illustrations could also make the game easier for first time players.
What do you think? Should I instruct our prospective designers to pitch full-colour illustrations? Or should the illustrations remain minimalist black-and-white drawings as they are now?