Over 2 years, my brothers and I have developed a game with full rules, have playtested and gone back and tore the whole thing apart, and repeated the cycle perhaps 30 times. Although there is more playtesting to be had, we're at a point where the look and feel of the game will become critical as we expand playtesting outside of our own small dev team. I'm looking for some tips from the forum that could help with the redesign of the board.
The original play board was not very graphic but was highly functional. There are several very simple grids and squares that are more or less jammed onto a standard size board for a euro game. I'm looking to jazz it up, perhaps with some separation of key mechanics across graphic elements that fit the overall theme of the game. What I am running into, however, is a decision of whether to use valuable board space to hold game cards. In some games this is overused, while others it is completely absent.
Two questions for the forum:
(1) Why would YOU recommend using board space to hold cards? and,
(2) What published games using cards and boards in play would you say have the best use of board space?
Thanks!
Thanks for the feedback! I'm glad that it's not seen as a vital component to the design of the board. I do think it is important for a game to have some visual cues to guide players through what they are supposed to do. Rather than having complete spaces for stacks of game components, we may provide some basic guidelines along the edges where a stack or two of components could be kept, which would take up much less board space while still providing visual cues as to how to use the available game pieces.