How To Create Your Own Board Game On The Game Crafter
There are a lot of things they don't tell you on The Game Crafter about creating your own game. To help crafters avoid the mistakes I've been making, I've created this page.
Coloration Changes When Printing Your Board Game
My biggest irk when my first prototype arrived was that all the art was darker than it had been on my monitor. This meant adjusting the coloration of every single object on every single card in the entire game as well as the manual. Make the art brighter than you actually want it, at least by a smidge. Very dark colors will appear to be black when printed.
Will the 5 by 8 Booklet Fit Inside The Medium Pro Box?
In chat, I was told that it would fit just fine. But in actuality, its a bit wider than the box and has to be warped to fit inside the box with it closed. What you want is the 4.5 by 8 Booklet (the "tall" one) for a Medium Pro Box. Note that the Medium Pro Box and the Medium Tuck Box are not the same size.
How much can fit in the Medium Pro Box?
Another they don't mention is details like how many micro cards will fit in the Medium Pro Box. If you have the full amount of poker cards that you can in a Medium Pro Box, you can fit an additional 200 micro cards. Micro cards are 1.25 x 1.75 inches, and poker cards are 2.5 x 3.5. Poker cards are 9 cents each and micro cards are 7 cents each.
Should I use a Large Pro Box even if my game isn't that big?
Absolutely not! If you can manage to use a Medium Pro Box, do so. It costs you less, your consumers less, takes up less space on the shelf and is easier to take with you. Be sure to customize your box not only on the top, but also on the sides so that you can tell what game it is even when its in a pile of games on the shelf. I carefully designed my game Heir to the Phoenix Crown to fit in a Medium Pro Box, shown below.
Do I have to upload each of my different card files individually?
Many new games have as many as six hundred unique cards. Each card being different means a different file for each card. The beauty of print-on-demand games at The Game Crafter is that they can handle this.
And even better, you can upload all the files for your cards at once and put them in one folder on your account at TGC. Then, when you are on "the card adding screen", you'll see the heading, "Import Cards From Folder". Click on the folder option. Choose a folder. Scroll down and click "choose this folder". Then after that there is one more step. Hit the import button beneath.
Then all the images from that folder will automatically turn themselves into cards. You do, however, still have to proof each and every one of them on the site. A bit of a pain, but a reasonable precaution.
How will I sell my game?
The Game Crafter has a market place of all the games created using their production process. When ordering prototypes of your own games, you can select other games to add to your order. You save on shipping when you order multiple games together, so its easy for all the game designers to decide to add games to their orders. I've already discovered several great games just by adding a game here and there to my prototype orders, such as Migration (shown below).
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