Playtesters Wanted: FREE finished copy when published

Have you seen the game Gruff? It's a game about goats...albeit monstrous ones. Your game sounds more light-hearted than that one, but it's new, had a successful Kickstarter and something you should be aware of as a "game about collecting goats" is a pretty specific theme!

If you post your pnp here I'm sure you'll get at least a few opinions of the rules, mechanics, etc. if not the testers you're looking for.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/173804/gruff

The eyes are fine. I wouldn't want to look at wall-eyed, slit pupils anyway. The hooves do need to be fixed (they come up like a high heel). But if you don't want to / can't, I understand. If you drew them and that's how you want to draw them, go for it. Don't ever let anyone tell you that your interpretation or drawing style is wrong.

(I'd also like it if their horns were always visible). I'd like to play it, but I don't have a 2-4 group.

Agreed. That's the advice I give people who are so beyond hopeless that you can only hope to spare their feelings. I deal with two kinds of authors when editing and mentoring. There are the ones who rake their manuscripts through the coals, constantly searching for fresh perspectives and encouraging criticism. Their biggest struggle is to find an audience who is qualified to vet their work. Then there are the ones look for sycophantic enablers and a pat on the back. For them, one "like" from a thirteen-year-old kid on teh Interwebz negates a dozen thoughtful critiques. They self publish about one ebook per month and can't understand why they aren't super rich yet. I'm lucky to have a wife who tears my stuff apart (just as I critique her artwork), and the best editors I've dealt with have sent me back some very insightful notes for revision before accepting something for publication. Conversely, I deal with one publisher who, while I'm grateful for the money, often lets me down by not catching my mistakes.

The illustrations look just fine -- in fact, good enough that they are worth critiquing. I'd rather come across as harsh in commenting on something, because if what I, some random guy on the Internet, wrote makes an artist feel bad then that person is going to feel downright suicidal when dealing with rejection letters or the sort of comments that even the most talented artists get when dealing with paying customers.

There certainly is a bar for the quality of art. Art itself may be subjective, but the the elements and principles of art are far closer to an absolute -- or, at the very least, something quantifiable. Then again, I've had more than one artist tell me that illustration isn't art, which is to say that it is for popular consumption, rather than high culture. You chose a poor example with the PowerPuff Girls though, because whether you like the style or not, it's a totally valid example of contemporary pop art. I get the impression that your view of these cartoons is based more in personal opinion than from a position of art appreciation.

Although it would make more sense for the anthropomorphized goat to eat a tin can seeing as how regular goats don't do that. They are far more likely to dent up the hood of your car after jumping onto it.

I wanted to give you some different examples of styles, but Google images is so cluttered up with Warhammer beastmen and #$@&%* furry erotica that searching for anthropomorphized goats is a hopeless, and rather disturbing, endeavor. The suggestions about different breeds and the shoddy costume are really quite good. Actually . . . realistic goats in awkward costumes could work out nicely. Mostly though, the illustration style should be consistent with the game's theme and the overall aesthetic. Anthropomorphic goats suggest characters with human intelligence that can achieve objectives outside of what a goat typically could. Your art sets the players' expectations for the game as a whole.

I ran the goat illustrations past my wife, who does animal art and used to raise goats. She couldn't vouch for how identifiable they were, as I made the mistake of asking her if they looked like goats, not "What do these look like?" However, she said the form and outline are good (questionable on the last one), as were the tail and face, and guessed that they were based on Angora goats. She noted that goats don't have an upper row of teeth, like the pirate captain, but didn't have an issue with the eyes, since they are anthropomorphized anyway. So, "They're just fine" from my wife, whose opinion is more qualified than mine.