Prototyping the board game

Board

You want to prototype the game fast so that you can playtest with your audience. We printed the board on separate sheets of A4 paper and taped them together to form a map. This can be done easily with any home printer. If you want something more presentable, you can also print the map at a poster printing shop and mount it onto a hard bristle board (which is what we did).

(left) paper prototype | (right) board prototype

Cards

What if you can use a spreadsheet to design cards in minutes? Yup, that’s Airtable for you! Here’s a step-by-step guide:

1. You should have an airtable view with your card title and graphic in separate columns

2. Next, launch “Blocks” and choose the page designer feature

3. Drag out the title and image elements and position/resize them accordingly

4. Click “Next Records” to scroll through and check all the other cards

5. Print the records in a grid of 9 on an A4 paper

Note: if you set the canvas as 272px by 381px, the cards would approximately print out to the standard poker card size of 2.5" by 3.5" .

Voila! We just used the same spreadsheet that keeps track of our card count to also rapidly populate & design 48 cards.

(Just a heads-up, the blocks feature is under a paid plan.)

Rapid prototyping of cards using Airtable

Tokens

No board game would be complete without tokens. The easiest way to start is to use tokens from other board games. Alternatively, you can print the graphic out on paper and make a mountain fold so that you can pick and move them around the board easily. When you need more legitimate tokens for beta testing, you can buy off-the-shelf meeples and stick your graphics on chipboard tokens. At some point, you will have to model out the final look of your tokens. There are a variety of 3D modeling tools you can use to do that. For beginners, we recommend TinkerCAD. It is super simple to learn and is suitable for tokens that are composed of basic geometrical shapes. Conversely, if you are designing detailed miniatures, you would probably have to use tools like Sculptris, Blender or Maya which have a steeper learning curve. Don’t get too caught up about finding/learning the best tool. Just use whichever tool you are familiar with that gets the job done. You don’t need a Ferrari to go buy groceries.

From 3D models to painted laser-cut tokens

Once you are done with your 3D models, you can bring them to life by either laser cutting or 3D printing at a local maker space. Even if you don’t have access to these gadgets, just show your 3D renders to your end-users to get their feedback on your designs. We laser cut our tokens from plywood and painstakingly painted each and every wooden token using paint markers. If you 3D-printed your models, you can also paint them using acrylic paint.

And there you have it!