UI Design/Narrative Design
You have stumbled upon an abandoned witch's workshop! As a coven of witches, recover decrepit potion recipes to uncover potion effects while enduring misfortunes along the way!
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Covencraft is a tabletop cooperative resource management game. Work together playing Action Cards to brew 5 types of potions. You win if you master 3 sets of potions, by brewing 5 of each of those types. Throughout the game, you record the various Misfortunes they endure when drawing Misfortune cards.
2023 Trailer
Iterative Design Process
The iterative design process has been taught and emphasized in my undergrad program since the very first Introduction to Game Design class. To streamline our workflow and process, my team used a mix of Agile development and the iterative design cycle for this project.
Responsibilities
As lead UI designer, my responsibilities included:
Develop numerous UI mockups and prototypes that clearly illustrate the progression of important game mechanics and information
Conduct card and game board layout adjustments based on user feedback
Collaborate and communicate with the systems and visual designers to ensure UI is up to date and consistent with current versions
Design graphic user interface elements on the game board, including point trackers and token and card placements
Fabricate customized components such as the token holder and Coven Leader pawn by 3D printing with an Ultimaker printer
Card interface
In Covencraft, players pass hands of cards in every round and need to understand the different types of information (ingredients and recipes with required ingredients and rewards) on the cards to be able to choose a card to play. The information hierarchy was extremely important to brainstorm, playtest, and iterate upon to make sure players wouldn’t get confused or overwhelmed by the information.
After playtesting and multiple iterations, we decided on the 1:2 horizontally split card as the most optimal way to organize the necessary information. However, players would still confuse the top half of the card as the required ingredients rather than the bottom half’s left-hand side. This issue was later remedied as we continued to design the game board.
Card UI Iterations
Final Card Designs
Game Board
The game board needed to be updated with almost every version of the game, as it was an essential part of playtest facilitation. The game board would not only be a game piece, but a way to deliver information to players, and through each iteration, our team found methods that worked and didn’t work. For example, although we finalized our card UI, we continued to iterate upon the game board until the month of the project.
As lead UI designer, I knew that we could use the game board to help remove visual confusion when referring to the cards’ information. I thought of the idea to attach an additional piece of paper to act like a partial sleeve for players to tuck the cards under on the game board. This ultimately became the final solution because the sleeve hid the top half of the cards and players no longer mistakenly referred to that information.
Game Board Iterations
Game Board Final Version
Covencraft is a tabletop game developed by a three-person team for the class Capstone at NYU over the course of 2 semesters. The game is currently still being developed and our progress can be followed on Instagram @covencraftthegame. I’d like to thank my collaborators Josh Finkel, Ellie Clendenning, Peter Seo, and Kaz Li for believing in me, the game, and us <3