Just when I was liking the name Voodoo Mama, I was driving down to the LA Festival of Books this weekend at USC to work my booth selling my graphic novel series Pariah, Missouri and I thought, “You know this game doesn’t have to be about potions, it’s a simple set-building card game, it could be anything.” I wanted to have 10 ideas/themes that we could go with besides the potion idea just to see what I could come up with.
I thought about what are MY favorite games. I really like Galaxy Trucker and Castles of Mad Kind Ludwig, because they build things. That idea of constructing your own X and seeing how it develops for me is a fun activity. So how could I maybe add that to the game? I want to keep it a card game, for my first original game that I’m going to see this through to the bitter end and I want to keep it simple with low costs and easy… so it’s cards all the way.
I didn’t want to do space-theme, like Trucker, because while it would be fun, it’s too close to that game. I wasn’t thrilled about other vehicles or machines, things like that.
Here are some sketches I did on some cards for the potion-making Voodoo Mama
Now I was thinking, what if instead of making potions, you are making a monster. Each monster would have some abilities and VP. Lots of fun combos and ways to set up the cards. I was thinking of them going side-ways and in different orientations.
Setting that up became a big challenge to make the art “fit” and be easy to read and understand.
I then thought, “Let’s keep it one orientation for simplicity.” I made some sketches were all the monsters/people were cut in three parts. So all the creations required the same amount, there were be combos that could still be used but we just made it even simpler. The art however would be a challenge, because for a 7-player game we are talking about a LOT of cards. So designing the different monsters would not be easy, and my 9-types of reagents in Voodoo Mama now seems really compelling.
Then is hit me, “What about Mythical creatures?” So now we are talking about cutting up monsters and putting them together! Wow, I like it! So you all know the Chimera, Griffen, Hipogriff, Pegasus; all these Greek Mythological creatures, what if all the players were a God or someone who created the next thing, the Pig-Bat-snake! So I made some sketches.
Next Up: To Find a Name and get some dummy art to play a game with!