The Making of a Fun Family Game, Part 3

We're sorry for the delay in bringing you the last installment of the Rooster Race journey. We hit a big road block in another project that put a kink into all the works. Anyway we're back and ready to share some more creation fun.

Putting It All Together

In the last two installments, we talked about creating the characters, the logo, and the game assets. This brings us to the all important…. packaging. After all, you need something to put it all into.

The initial rough we wanted to have a fun barnyard feel to reinforce the rooster concept.We roughed in our idea with the logo, fun characters and other necessary elements like copy, logos, UPC, item numbers, contents, etc.

This early concept which at the time was being shown to big retailers and had to change constantly to satisfy the particulars of each one of them. Here’s a few examples of criticisms: too much illustration, character getting in the way of the logo, too much background, logo needs to be bigger, vertical to horizontal to vertical again.

Rooster Race Package Front Horizontal

Rooster Race Package Back Horizontal

Rooster Race Package Back Vertical

Rooster Race Package Back Vertical

 

The final decision was made to go vertical, but the logo needed to be much bigger to stand out on the shelves. So, in the end after all the back and forth, we ended up with this:

 
Oh… let’s not forget instructions. An area of game development that is often left to the end. A mistake. The graphic layout and the actual verbiage of instructions are so important they really need to be developed alongside the game and the game mechanics. i.e. it’s easy to understand where a discard goes when you see an image, but if I just say discard, you may end up with the game in the trash. We added  little bit of fun to otherwise basic instructions by adding some characters in the background in a light gray.

We design our games based on the giggle meter. If while designing sketches or laying out packaging and game assets, giggles erupt in the studio, we know we're on the right track. We hope you've got a giggle out of this making of series. Stay tuned for more behind the scenes posts.


Find out more and see a fun video of how to play the game with Joe Roosterfin over at Roosterfin Games.

The Making of a Fun Family Game, Part 2

The Rooster Race Journey

continues with giggle worthy character development of the racing roosters

Last week we started the rooster race journey and ended with a sneak peek at the fun rooster characters that make up the game. 

We spent a good deal of time refining the overall character looks as well as individual personalities of the characters since so much of the game play depends on the characters.
We had a ton of fun creating this waky racing characters, and we hope you enjoy our character development journey. 
 
Here's the character line up.

 

 Ready! Set! Go!

Sketch until there’s a giggle:

We start with rough pencil sketches and designs exploring the looks and personalities of the characters. With these guys we wanted to make sure they're cute, but also wacky and, of course, racing and capturing some of the frantic feel of a racer. Once we get a giggle going, we know we’re onto something. The last page is the page of the best of all the pages of sketches to show the client.

 

© Imagine That! Design

© Imagine That! Design

© Imagine That! Design

The fun folks at Roosterfin Games giggled. Good, we were on the right track. Next we took any suggestions and thoughts from the client and ran with the roosters they picked and took them to the next stage.

© Imagine That! Design

 

 

With the general look of the characters defined, we finalized a couple finished illustrated looks of one of the characters to send to the client to establish the end result which will be applied to all the characters. Option C was the final choice.

During all this we’re also defining and refining the graphic design of the cards. No point in designing a character that doesn’t fit. We offered the client a couple options for the look of the cards.

 

 

At the finish line, this is what we ended up with for the Rooster Racing cards. Giggle worthy, right?

 

 

 

Game Assets

This game concept also needed some 3D parts. This was a bit of a new adventure for us. The client asked for corn, we gave them corn. We created this in Cinema 4D a 3D program. They created the corn on 3D printer.

3D printed corn by Roosterfin Games

 

  

We have come to the end of the journey for this week. We hope our cute rooster characters brought a giggle or two.

Do you know of a giggle game? Any game where you look at the packaging, read the cards, read the instructions and have an uncontrollable giggles. We’d love to hear about it in the comments below. Thanks for stopping by!

Be sure to come back next week for the conclusion of the rooster's journey with all the important packaging and instructions, where you'll see us putting it all together. Until next time, you can buy your own copy of this fun family game here. 

 

 

 

All images ©Imagine That! Design, all rights reserved

The Making of a Fun Family Game, Part 1

The Rooster Race Journey

The sun rises over the farm. Here comes the roosters. And boy are they hungry!

©2015 Imagine That! Design

Rooster Race, The High Low Game of Fowl Fun was one of the first games we helped bring to life with Roosterfin Games. 

 

 2017 Seal of Excellence Award by Creative Child Magazine.

The Beginning:

This is how it all. We got an initial verbal brief from the Joe Roosterfin with a description of the game and basic imagery. Then he sent us a rough instruction sheet outlining the game play and cards with basic clip art. 

Initial Instructions

Initial Cards

Logo Development:

One of the first things we do with a new concept is create a logo. We start by researching other similar products, colors for the overall game, fonts, image and illustration styles, and overall looks to help us figure out where we're going and which direction we should take, i.e. character vs. straight type logo design. Then we explore the concept and various directions with rough sketches. Starting with very loose sketches to more detailed choices which we send to the client. We design with the giggle factor in mind. Once one of us starts giggling while working on a project, we know we're on to something.

Rough Sketch Options

Rough Sketches

Final Logo Sketch Options

Upon approval of a direction from the client (and hopefully we've made them giggle too), we dive in to refining the design, breaking it down into parts, colors, characters, fonts, tag line, etc. and start debating its pieces and parts until we are happy with the overall look and story it tells.

 

Rooster Race Logo Development

The logo for this game begged to be a heavy character concept reflecting the cute characters on the cards. The client loved it!

Rooster Race Final Logo

Character Development:

We spent a good deal of time refining the overall character looks as well as individual personalities of the characters. Here's a sneak peek of the character line up.

Come back next week to continue the rooster's journey, starting with giggle worthy character development. Until next time, you can buy your own copy of this fun family game here.

Cock-a-doodle-doo!