Just My Type (or, the process of self-publishing my first card game)
Documenting my thoughts and experiences while wrapping up development on Just My Type.
Preface
This project is a continuation of one I worked on earlier this year; get caught up to speed by reading the first article here. Also, you can get your very own copy of Just My Type now on The Game Crafter! Buy a copy of the game here, or click the link below.
Did you read the first article? Good! Let’s get on with it.
Intent
As a recap, the learning objective for Just My Type is to teach non-designers the emotional connotation related to fonts and typefaces. It’s designed to prompt these questions in non-designers when confronted with a situation: When do I use this font versus that one? What mood or tone does this typeface convey?
The first half of this process was focused on ensuring I had a fun, playable game that met my learning objectives (which I do!). My goal now is to get this game at a level where I felt comfortable selling it — specifically, I’d like to update the design of the cards and implement some high-level changes I gathered during the previous playtests.
Design & balancing
Just My Type was always going to have a clean, spartan, and spare design aesthetic — I wanted all the attention to go to the typography of the cards and specifically the forms of the typefaces featured.
With that in mind, I pivoted from the original logo’s League Spartan to Verona Serial Bold, which I enjoyed for its unique angled stems and strong serifs. Josefin Sans remains the supporting font for certain cards and packaging.
The original design of the cards were functional, but also were a bit lower fidelity than I’d liked. For the first edition of the game, I made a number of small but important changes to the Type cards:
- I moved from the small-cut cardstock (which, in addition to playtesters struggling to handle and fan out, also prompted complaints about the card’s texture) to standard poker-sized cards with a UV coating and linen texture, improving the quality.
- I aligned the typeface to the true center of the card to emphasize the separate hierarchy of the type of font and the font itself. Font type is now in the style of that type rather than being set in Josefin Sans as before.
- Perhaps most importantly, I rebalanced the Type deck to include completely unique fonts (so no repetitions!) and organized the typefaces in a logical way: there are now 40 serif, 40 sans serif, 20 monospace, 20 handwriting, 20 script, and 20 display typefaces uniquely represented in this deck, chosen for their diversity in form, legibility, and connotations.
I also made a few changes to the Product cards, namely:
- Product cards are now entirely black, making them easier to discern in a deck should they ever be mistakenly shuffled into the mix.
- I bumped the amount of Product cards from 32 to 40 to have a nice, round 200 cards in the box. In addition, I also gathered feedback on what prompts were not funny or interesting to players by having playtesters pitch fonts to certain cards and gauging their responses; I replaced the worst-performing prompts accordingly.
Lastly, the game has a box now! In keeping with the packaging I’ve seen on shelves and in our dorm’s board game closet, the package features relevant stats about the game as well as a description of the game — on the sides, Just My Type is sold as “a party game of fonts and connotations.”
In all, I’m pleased with how the final design of the game turned out — while the prototype design would have served me well regardless, the new design places emphasis on the form and aesthetics of the typefaces used, which is at the heart of this game.
One last playtest
In a last bit of sanity-checking ahead of turning the game in, I wanted to do one more playtest. And so, with my power as an RA and my need for an on-call activity for my residents, I hosted a board game night in my dorm!
I ordered some pizza, pulled out some board games, put on a chill playlist, and got a game of Just My Type going. As in the last iterations of playtesting, I didn’t intervene in this game at all except to take notes and pictures of the game in order to test the efficacy of the rules.
While I observed the game, I learned a couple things from the players:
- The rules were pretty straightforward (which is good!). There was a case of one person mistakenly thinking that all cards had to be discarded at the end of every round — including their hand — but the group quickly corrected themselves after referring to the rulebook.
- People were slow to adopt the pitching mentality, but after two or three rounds of play, players began to make funnier, crazier, and more thoughtful pitches (this is something I also noticed in all other playtests, too). It seems that groups with some familiarity with each other acclimate to the game faster than relative strangers.
- Someone complained that there wasn’t enough of a variety of fonts, which I realized was because there were too many cards of the same style consecutive in the stack. I shuffled the Type cards to avoid this situation in future games.
Response to the game during game night was overall pretty positive; players noted that they were surprised a game about fonts could actually be fun! And at the end of it all, I was just really happy to see people playing with the actual game.
Perhaps my favorite pitch came from when the client was asking for a typeface for a clown conservatory in France, and someone piped in and said:
Okay, they would totally use Sofia! It’s a French name, it looks dramatic and theatrical, but also with a bit of “hon hon hon oui oui baguette” energy, y’know?
Hon hon hon indeed.
Video tutorial
With playability in mind, here’s a quick start tutorial for how to play Just My Type!
Future editions of Just My Type will have a QR code that directs players to this video.
Final thoughts
I’m really happy I had the opportunity to revisit this game and get it to a state I didn’t even know I could get it to. I’m even happier I can come away from this project with a professionally printed game (!!!).
Here’s a few things to keep in mind for those who’d like to self-publish their games:
- Allow yourself to have a sh*tty first draft. The uglier the prototype is, the more players will focus on the core dynamics of the game. The time for prettier cards and pieces comes much later.
- Playtest, playtest, playtest. As of writing this article, I playtested Just My Type with at least 30 people, likely more… and I still feel the need to playtest more! Playtesting allows you to get some really fascinating insight from people who’ve never seen your game before, so things that may seem obvious to you may actually be unclear to fresh faces.
- Understand your timeline. The Game Crafter is a great, user-friendly place to get your game published, but be sure you have the time to set up and order a proof of your game; if you’re in a time crunch or have a deadline to meet (like for a class, for instance), it can end up becoming very expensive very quickly.
In the end, this was an invaluable experience to get to manufacture this game. I hope future players can come to understand the level of excitement I feel when I find the perfect typeface for a given situation in a fun, light, low-stakes way. If nothing else, I now have a deck of Type cards to play around with, and who knows what other type-themed games I could make with those!
Buy Just My Type online from The Game Crafter here, or get started with the print-and-play playtest version here.
Special thanks to Alwyn T., Alyssa R., Amy N., Anchit N., Ben M., Brad R., Cainan C., Calvin T., Elise M., Emily R., Emma G., Eve L., Jessica R., Kaitlyn K., Karla V., Lee’Shae L., Maria B., Nohemi D., Sedinam W., Siah Yong T., Wint T., and everyone else who playtested or contributed in any way to this game.
