So I was out of town for a while leading up to this CUPdate, so it’s a bit of a smaller post, but I did some 3D printing before I left, so that’s mostly what I’ll be talking about here. I also ordered the first copy of most assets from TheGameCrafter and that came in the mail!

While I was coming up with extra parts, I decided to find some card case models on Thingaverse and do some 3D prints to figure out if I could use any of those for my game. The first one came out too small since I resized it to fit in my printer so it wasn’t big enough to hold cards. But then I continued to print a bunch more each day and found a couple that are pretty good for what I want.

Then I decided to make a 3D model of The Gek so I could use it as a printable piece for indicating who the current starting player is. I sculpted this in Blender.

I took the model into Flashprint MP to prepare it for printing.

Then I printed it out! I tried a bigger size and used some paint markers to test how they worked on the 3D prints. It was pretty good but I didn’t have a purple one so I had to paint The Gek blue instead. Then I printed a couple of smaller versions too that are closer to the size that I think I want it to be. I may end up using acrylic paints for the final version.

So I ordered one of each game part on TheGameCrafter and after about 2.5 weeks, it shipped to my location! It was really exciting to open the package up and see my box shrink-wrapped and a physical game. I was happy with how it all came out! I think my main change for the box itself is that I may update where the gloss is and reserve it for only the characters.

I opened it up and the numbered tiles and score tokens all printed out good as well! I may want to work on the designs a bit to re-center and have fewer border-like elements to account for the drift of them being slightly off-centered, but otherwise, very minor updates would be made.

The scoreboard came out well and I tested out the dry-erase markers with it. I was happy to find out that any dry-erase markers work so I can more easily replace and mix and match colors.

And then I looked through the cards! I printed a few variations on colors I wasn’t 100% certain on, and I’m really happy that all of them are readable on the final cards so I’m able to pick the ones I like most instead of accommodating for ones that might be more readable. The quality on these cards is a lot higher than I was used to from my prototype cards so I’m really happy with those as well.

So I picked the best of each type and I decided which ones I’m going with for my final ones. I’m happy that none of them look too similar to each other and they’re all readable.

And it was cool seeing the cardbacks finally on all of them. I’m still thinking about maybe updating that drawing of The Gek but I’m not 100% sure yet.

Then I tested out using dry-erase markers for the guessing card. The black ended up being unreadable, so I knew not to use that for the final.

I tried red and that one works well. I’m probably going with the dark backgrounds since that’s easier to fill in and read.

Then I laid out some cards and put tokens on top to simulate what it would look like in the game and I’m happy with how they came out!

I also continued to draw more characters to add to the ones available in the game! This has been an ongoing background task I’m doing when I’m not currently working on the game and just need something easy to do on nights after work.

So I’m getting very close to the end of this project. Just some tweaks on the assets, the rulebook, and then the final prints!