In anticipation of the Kickstarter launch of Crumbs! The Sandwich Filler Game, its designer (Jon) and publisher (Scott) will be discussing the process of designing and developing a game from concept to creation! This week, creating their customers and their orders:
Jon: Finally we get to talk about one of my favourite parts of the game; the customers! As mentioned in a previous blog, I always wanted the customers to be human over anthropomorphic characters, the main reason being that I wanted the theme to shine through and for players to feel like they are serving customers in a shop, as well as being able to offer visible diversity amongst customers, something I am quite vocal about.
Thankfully Scott agreed with my thoughts and also was keen to showcase a diverse range of characters. The artwork Rory came up with is quite simply superb - people of different ages, cultural backgrounds, hairstyles and clothing litter the cards and I couldn’t be happier. As a cheeky bonus for being the designer I was kindly offered the chance for some of my family to be in the game, so if you see a grey haired woman with a slightly unusual eye that’s my mum who only has one functional eye. Again, it’s testament to Rory for being able to include aspects of characters you wouldn’t typically see in a game, let alone an accurate likeness of people (she is chuffed with it!).
In the same vein, it's been great to represent people with different dietary requirements in our expansion, but you'll have to wait until our next blog for more about that!
Scott: The customers in Crumbs! are one of the most charming aspects of the game, as each of these cheery characters line up for you to make their extensive, and often ludicrous, orders.
But there's a logic to those orders (honest!) in order to make them varied and challenging, without being impossible. Here's a few of the design secrets behind them:
Every order card has at least one sandwich that takes more than five actions to make. This will introduce any players unfamiliar to Crumbs! to it's key concept; action efficiency, as well as providing a consistent challenge for players. Also, order cards have less of the ingredient on their reverse required in it's customer orders for game balance, that doesn't take into account the other order card removed from the game, so there can still be some difficult combinations!
One of the parts I've enjoyed the most about developing the customers is seeing real people represented in the game. In addition to myself, Jon, and his family, there's a couple of customers you might recognise if you've attended any Minerva events; our demo team Matt & Lucy.
A common question I've been asked is 'Will there be a chance to be a customer in the game?' and the answer to that is yes! There will be a limited number of pledges to have a custom portrait by artist Rory Muldoon and be featured as a named customer on an order card. It's one of the aspects of crowdfunding that makes games like Crumbs! really special; backers getting involved and seeing their impact reflected in the finished game, creating treasured memories.
In our next entry, designing an expansion for Crumbs!
Crumbs! is launching on Kickstarter on 8th August, click here to view the campaign page: