I got it one piece at a time
And it didn't cost me a dime
You'll know it's me when I come through your town
I'm gonna ride around in style
I'm gonna drive everybody wild
'Cause I'll have the only one there is around
- "One Piece at a Time" Wayne Kemp and Johnny Cash
One Piece at a Time
If ya didn't know I'm aeiou, and I made this thing. From 2020-2023 I went back and forth working on a project I called "Project Electronic Cardboard". It was stuck in a frustrating loop of starting back up and then one thing or anther leading to it being back-burnered again. So I set out into 2024 the goal of finishing it as best I could with the mantra from that ol' country classic "One Piece at a Time". Every day I did a little bit of work, slowly piecing together something that might not be perfect - but was uniquely mine.
This devlog shows just a small amount of that process. I believe making a game is best as a highly iterative process. This means ideas are rapidly prototyped, recycled, or shelved. And the game emerges from that iteration. But each piece along the way is important, as it gets you one step closer to the end product.
Friendly Mulligan?
Where better to start, than our intrepid protagonist Mulligan! Mulligan's design and the first pass at her in game sprite were created by the magnificent Genel Jumalon. Genel put on an absolute masterclass in character design with his work creating Mulligan. He began by creating an array of concepts to then be narrowed down based on what best fit the character. I'm still in awe at how he was able to create a lineup of unique silhouettes that all express strong character with minimal detail.
From there the task of choosing a color for her outfit became the next task. In retrospect the other colors look weird on mulligan, but when you are in the throws of character design something as prevalent at the main characters color scheme can drive you crazy. There was a point in time when the orange jacket was the winner, but alas naruto-mulligan was short lived.
I probably asked Genel to render three dozen different color jackets, but eventually the cool blue with purple accents hit the spot. I figured that color would work best against green grass, tan sand, and grey stone - and fit with the greenish blue coloring that was becoming a part of the general card color scheme. With that, the Mulligan we know and love was born.
Pixels (No, not the one with Adam Sandler)
Working with such a strong design made it all the easier to translate into a pixel art game. Strong features such as Mulligan's hair, slightly oversized jacket, and boots all work as markers for visual design when you are working at a low fidelity visual form like pixel art.
Here we can see the evolution of Mulligan's in game front facing sprite. (With Genel creating (1), and me creating the rest.).
As you can see there was quite the shift in the levels of "chibi"ness the sprite went through. Design (2) was created as I first got reinvested in the project in 2024, with the idea for pixel characters with the amount of detail of roughly Gen V of pokemon in a 1x1 format. As I started to play around with it in game though I realized it felt a bit too condensed, so aimed for something closer to the taller 1x2 format of many GBA games. Our Mulligan had a late growth spurt, let's say.
But static sprites are one thing, what really sells a protagonist is a satisfying movement sprite. The thing I spent the most time on was UNDOUBTEDLY the movement of Mulligans Ahoge (her big center hair strand). After a day of getting nowhere with the animation I finally sketched it out on paper while following the wiggle of my hand:
This lead me to realizing you really wanted the bottom of the object to move first, and then the rest to follow from the bottom up. This gives the object a sense of weight as it looks like it's pulling on the structure as it sways.
Add a little perspective shift as the arms swing, time the movement to when she dips down to switch feet, and baby you a got a stew going.
It's in the Cards
But what's a card game without cards? Well it's just a game, and that's mighty boring if you ask me. Through the design process the card frame shifted too many times to count with tiny adjustments and tweaks to make the card convey the information it needed to. Here are some of the big things I learned to be important as the design evolved:
- Don't work against existing conventions. You can fight your style battles elsewhere. Do what's expected and show cost in the top left in an orb, and Atk/HP marked with the expected symbols.
- The art is the most important thing players use to recognize cards (Even more so than the name!). It deserves to take up a large portion of the frame.
- Outline colors on text are great for legibility, but can make a design look tacky when overused.
The card frame through development:
You may notice the final card design shrink's it's height a bit. This is to match the exact aspect ratio of a standard trading card, as it would make buying things like sleeves for physical cards much easier (not that physical cards are a current plan, but future proofing doesn't hurt :D )
Work of Art
Aaaaaaaaand what's a card without art? I was fortunate to work with several amazing artists who made their impact on the overall card art style for the game, but want to highlight Rama Widjanarko in particular.
Rama was the creator of the design for the "Stellar" Soul cards, a fan favorite as well as admittedly my favorite set of cards. I came to Rama with only a vague idea of a space themed tokusatsu team, and they were able to expand it into an amazing and recognizable line. The first set of Stellars created was Blue, Orange, and Green. Rama had the idea for their mask stars to add a point as they went up the line, as a way to match the mechanics of the cards going into the next one when you play them.
Finally, I wanted to highlight just how much thought Rama put into Stellar Grey's design. The detail of his skeletal armor frame only being vaguely visible in the final card.
Wrapping Up...
Phew, that's a lot of stuff and those are just some small pieces of the massive amount of iteration that went into making this thing. Let me know if this was something you enjoyed seeing, or what other behind the scenes dev stuff you might like seeing in the future! I didn't even touch on things like music, overworld sprites, duel interface, or area design :V
In Other News...
I released the full Cardaire soundtrack last week, and it's continued to be spread to other streaming platforms this week. If you're one of the two apple music listeners you can catch it over there now!
https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/aeiou/cardaire-original-videogame-soundtrack