Notebook Nations Devlog

A month or two ago I mentioned that I’d begun work with my creative team on a new board game called Tiny Conflicts. The premise was to create a casual 4x game that takes place in the margins of a student’s class notebook. The title has evolved to better evoke that aesthetic, and the artwork has executed quite well on the initial vision for the game. Please allow me a few moments to catch you up on how things have been going!

We’ve completed all of the artwork for our first nation, the Mushroom Tribe. They’re a chaotic, militaristic and social nation whose primary playstyle is conquest. Part of the charm of this game is that the little guys are all very innocent looking, but the player behaviors and final board state are in discord with the aesthetic. With that in mind, here are our little guys:

Their favorite activities are marching, sleeping, and murder.

 

Of course, the game isn’t all about military units. There’s a civilization to build, and that means buildings:

 

The simple life is best for our mushroom friends.

 

In order for them to have a place to conquer, I’ve been working on designing a map. The game has a handful of resources to collect – gold, wood, and food are the primaries, with culture, science, and a magic resource called source, as the secondaries. Also, some nations have different methods of obtaining food – farming, hunting, gathering, fishing, and destruction. With those things in mind and the desire to avoid a fully symmetrical map, I’ve started working on layouts that feel well suited for different nation types. Here’s what I ended up with as a first draft:

Blue is water, used by fishing nations. Green is forest, red is mountain, gold is foraging, purple is start zone and the central deep purple is the source pool. This is a 0.75″ grid stretching 2’x2′, and I’m planning an additional 1’x2′ board that can slide on for larger games. The plan looks something like this:

I’m pleased with the progress we’re making on this one. While I haven’t gone into mechanics or game flow at all, what little testing we’ve done without a real map has felt intuitive and engaging. I might go into that aspect of the development in a later devlog. Map design is the primary focus now, with additional nations after. For now though, that’s what I’ve got to show!

 

 

 

5 4 votes
Article Rating
Alex_Demote
Game designer, junk collector, paint chip taste tester
Subscribe
Notify of
52 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Rikki-Tikki-Deadly

I was watching Puss n Boots while working out today and I’d heard that it’s good, but this panic attack scene just absolutely blew me away:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rtl4-lWGwEA

SonOfSpam

Yikes. Well done and familiarish.

Don T

Oh my. Leverkusen is on fiya.

King Hippo

WOW, I had given up!

ballsofsteelandfury

Gotta love it

King Hippo

Ro-ma if you want to!

(SPOILER – they apparently did NOT want to)

ArmedandHammered

Alex, I love what you are doing. The games looks and sounds like it will be a lot of fun.

Don T

Angels in the Outfield stuff over at Leverkusen. 1-2

King Hippo

oh shit, what did Mike Trout break NOW?

King Hippo

Paging Monsieur Scotchnaut – Roma has a player wearing shirt #69!

Gumbygirl
King Hippo

They’ve de-Mexified Dora the Explorer. Per the ad on Paramount+ anyway. They probably thought it was de-racisming BUT YO, DAS RAYCESS!!!

Last edited 5 months ago by King Hippo
King Hippo

My hellscape nightmare call went more than 30 minutes over. Because of course. Zaxby’s order was still warm, though. Because Zaxby’s is magick and just KNOWS, man.

Treyverkeusen on the brink of losing invincibility, but should still get el trey.

Villa? They have it all to do.

ArmedandHammered

For your enjoyment, and I dedicate this to Ball:
https://youtu.be/1XT6I2XTC2s?si=29kepbRN-7xgJzYR

Don T

This game looks very cool. Love the Mushroom Tribe. I could handle being conquered by cute widdle murderin’ fungi. Especially when marching over some relatives. Some.

ArmedandHammered

Toy robot tribe? Squirrel tribe? Or the one every body hates – the broccoli tribe!

Game Time Decision

GROOT!

Don T

Love the robot idea. Stiff. Logical. The more emotional fail upwards to the top.

Rikki-Tikki-Deadly

How about an insect tribe, made cute like in A Bug’s Life? Except, you know, a lot like actual bugs in real life.

Senor Weaselo

The mushroom tribe is of course opposed to the badger tribe, and allied against them with the snake tribe.

Horatio Cornblower

Taking a work break to kayak through a nearby pond. My mission? For years a couple of Canada geese pairs have nested in it and raised goslings. They were back this year, one with 5 goslings, the other with three. I haven’t seen a trace of them, including shit, in three days. It’s a mystery that needs solving.

BugEyedBoo

A while back we had geese hatch in our pond, and after a couple of days they wandered off. Not sure exactly where they were headed, but they didn’t like our pond.

These days, there’s a mating pair that builds a nest. A day or two after the eggs hatch, the local raccoons come and eat them. Which is sad.

Horatio Cornblower

Raccoons gotta eat too, and there’s no shortage of Canada geese.

Kayaked the entire pond, and I definitely smell like it. No sign of them anywhere. I knew where one nest was and no sign of recent occupation. I did get to tap a decent-sized snapping turtle on the back to get it out of my way.

My best guess is that whatever got one of the adults, (forgot to mention that one of the adults had been MIA for several days before all of them disappeared), came back and either got all of them or got the goslings and the adults just left.

As Hobbes said nature, like children, is nasty, brutish, and short.

Rikki-Tikki-Deadly

“I wouldn’t go so far as to call it ‘brutish’, but two out of three ain’t bad.” – Deanna Favre

Don T

Throw in a cellphone cam and drunk Richard Attenborough translation and I’m all over “Geese Aplenty”.

King Hippo

I have the annual “cats rubbed poison oak or sommet onto my forearms” and in the requisite steroid regimen to cast it away.

This comes with some pretty hardcore insomnia (I maybe slept 45 minutes last night) and I have a call with an “unsophisticated” (and likely ornery) Landlord at 2:15. Should be fun.

But then I’mma get Zaxby’s and watch teh Zooropa.

BugEyedBoo

I’ve had to take a cycle of prednisone a couple of times. That stuff does me the same way – after a day or two I’m bouncing off the walls and staying up all night. Then the crash hits, and I’m tired and grouchy for a few days.

King Hippo

Yeah, grouchy is usually “Day 3” and then comes “shit guts out” – at least usually.

So I will apologize in advance for being a dick when I write the Lesser Footy post tomorrow!

Rikki-Tikki-Deadly

I’ve taken it twice and both times the only real effect it had on me was “make the poison ivy go away almost instantly”.

ArmedandHammered

Anymore, poison Ivy is an automatic trip to the doctor or ER as soon as it starts to appear on my skin. It spreads on me like I was an aggressive slime mold. The steroid shots don’t bother me. The worst case was when it had gotten all over my hands and I went to the bathroom without washing my hands first, so a very embarrassing phone call to the doctor and went in for a shot, I must admit the doctor was as horrified as I was. Good thing I was not dating or married at the time. I had to sleep with my hands in ski gloves so I would not scratch. That was misery, will take kidney stones over that any day.

BugEyedBoo

For me it’s just a low-grade itch, but for two of my brothers poison ivy causes chemical-warfare style blisters.

ArmedandHammered

Yep, my mom once breathed in a lot of smoke from when my grandfather was burning a bunch of brush that included a lot of poison ivy. She ended up in the hospital for 2 weeks and still has some breath issues. I thought having my nethers covered was bad, but I cannot fathom having my lungs and throat itch continuously.

King Hippo

I am in agony just THINKING about either of those anecdotes. HOLY SHIT

Rikki-Tikki-Deadly

I read a description that the relief you get from itching poison ivy is on the level of satisfying that heroin addicts get from doing heroin.

ArmedandHammered

Well, I would rather do heroin than get poison ivy again.

2Pack

My younger daughter and her fiancee along with big sis hang out at a pub scene where board games and darts are the pastimes. When you market this let us know. I will buy a couple as gifts.

yeah right

I like it. Straightforward and new players can jump right in without having to learn an encyclopedia worth of back story.

Horatio Cornblower

“Their favorite activities are marching, sleeping, and murder.”

Congratulations. You invented cats.

LemonJello

I was going to say the Mushroom Tribe is absolutely the Marine Corps.

King Hippo

The Marine Corps is CATS.

Horatio Cornblower

My father, an Army veteran, described the Marine Corps motto as “Hi diddle diddle, straight up the middle.”

He also had a story about a Navy guy telling him that his troop transport could carry “300 people and 3,000 Marines.”

Game Time Decision

I feel like the word used for “sleeping” should start with an “m”, but can’t think of any similes

King Hippo

This would make a perfect gift for the sick weirdo we all have in their lives.

OK, in many cases that person IS US, but hey…treat yo’self