Inspired by the sci fi movies and TV shows, combined with a love of board games, my wife I developed a game called "Homestead". Over the course of two years, we came up with rules and different versions and play tested it over and over again with our friends and families. Now that it's complete, we are looking to see what our next steps are. The premise is simple: navigate your ship through the unknown void of space until you discover a new sustainable planet called "Homestead". There are many different "situations" that players come across and using their "supplies" they must try to defeat them and continue on. The players must survive and discover Homestead or they will perish.
Version 1
Using clip art graphics, tiny toy ships and business cards and coasters, we created a simple version of the game. This was probably the most challenging thing given that we had to keep playing over and over again. The initial font, while futuristic in appearance, proved to be slightly unreadable in the long run.
Version 2
For the next version, we chose to make the tiles a bit smaller (still using coasters), change the font and introduce "ghost ships", allowing players to remain the game if they perished. We also updated the designs to make them a bit cleaner and also decided to introduce more streamlined wild cards and an information card for player's reference. We continued to play test with different people, fine-tuning the rules and making notes as we continued.
Version 3 - Prototype
I decided to make my own designs and soon came across Board Games Maker and saw that they could print more the more visually appealing game tiles and cards. That way, we could see how the game could look in a final form. We chose a glossy finish and was quite pleased with the potential look.
Ships
Using Tinkercad, an online 3D object designer, I created a variety of different ships. We purchased a 3D printer and printed each one. All 17 are inspired by many different sci fi ships from movies and TV, while a few might be some random ideas that were inspired by stuff from every day life. Each ship had a "ghost version" of itself and both were painted silver and while, respectively.