Week 1 Recap ~ Dev log #1
Week 1 was surprisingly productive despite being on a family vacation for four of the days. Somehow we always seem to start projects right before life gets busy 😅.
This week, we focused on building out some core functionality. Players can now choose the number of participants (3–5) and select which territory their house will rule. From there, the game transitions into the main game screen.
We also set up our first version of the 3D map. You can move around, zoom in and out, and see each territory represented by its castle (just cubes for now). Clicking on a castle opens a modal which will display that player’s stats.
Alongside development, we worked on naming territories, writing their descriptions, and defining their unique perks and disadvantages. We also mapped out a rough layout for the main game UI, which helped us build an initial version of the player stat bar (placeholder icons for now).
The Big Decision
Before diving deeper into visuals such as cards, icons, UI etc.. we had to face something we’d been putting off.
Our game has over 500 cards.
And each one needs an illustration.
We made a decision early on that we don’t want to use AI for our game. While one of us does draw, creating 500 detailed illustrations on top of development, marketing, and everything else just isn’t realistic.
At the same time, we didn’t want to lose the richness of the game by reducing everything to simple icons or text.
So over the weekend, we finally sat down and tackled it head-on.
After a lot of back and forth, we landed on a direction that feels right for us:
We’re going to build 3D scenes in Blender and bring them into the game, aiming for a cozy, slightly realistic pixel-style look.
It’s still not the simplest path, but it solves the scale problem while opening the door for more dynamic and interesting visuals than we originally imagined.
What’s Next
As we’re writing this, we’re working on a proof of concept for this art direction and setting up the tools and workflow to make it efficient.
We’re really excited to start sharing actual visuals soon.
Would love to hear your thoughts on this approach and on pixel-style visuals in general.
That’s a wrap on Week 1.
On to Week 2 ✌️