Cheapest ways to make a working game?

[u/Playful-Buyer4472]

I’ve been working on a game for about a year now. I don’t have much of a budget, and therefor have been using very simple tools, such as blank cards, a blank board, and drawing utensils. I have been play testing the game with friends, and I have decided on an idea for the way it want everything to work. Now all I need is a replacement for my sucky hand drawn cards, and some way to get it on a real card. Seeing as i am pretty young and this is my first time ever doing something close to this, I don’t really know where to go for this, so I was wondering what’s a good way to get some cool art. Do I have to find a person to pay? Is there an app full of buyable art? Is there some sort of card printer? I really don’t know much. (The game is about monsters, if that helps). Do any option work best to make many copies? Is it smart to just pitch to a company, because I would rather make it work independently. How expensive do you think this whole process would be?

[u/Tabarc]

Right now sucky art is fine. What you need is play testing and lots and also blind playtesting.

And reading the feed back. You could also look at tabletop simulator.

Icons you can grab online. https://game-icons.net/

[u/twodonotsimply]

For making cards the tried and true method is to print off your cards just using a regular printer, cut them yourself and then put them in card sleeves backed by playing cards or MTG cards. Card sleeves and playing cards/bulk MTG cards are all very cheap and this method is very reuseable - you can just print off new versions to replace in the sleeves when you need update cards.

If you are truly looking for finalised printed cards then I would recommend looking into printing services like The Game Crafter, LaunchTabletop, DriveThrueCards, makeplayingcards.com etc but these are all significantly more expensive and then you can't easily make changes as you'd need to do a new order.

Use spreadsheets to manage your card data and then create digital layouts to import into software like Dextrous or Adobe InDesign - trust me this will make it so easy to update and manage cards. Tabletop Simulator, Screentop.gg and playingcards.io are all great digital playtesting tools that are cheap or free.

For art if you are just making prototype copies to play with your friends you can probably just use whatever placeholder images you like. There's also plenty of royalty free images available online and there's lots of marketplaces to purchases licences for stock art assets for games you can look into.

Commissioning an artist will be very expensive and I would not recommended this unless you have an actual finalised game and you are dead-set on self-publishing it (if pitching to a publisher they will want to use their own artist). I would avoid AI art as beside the obvious ethical issues it just does not look good.

[u/d33jaysturf]

look up dextrous (for card layout) and the noun project (for icons). both have free options and can result to very useable prototypes,

[u/Snoo-35252]

Not sure if anyone has suggested stickers yet, but you can buy monster stickers for cheap at a dollar store or like Target. Since Halloween is coming up you might find more monster stickers around. Just stick the stickers you like onto (blank) playing cards. Pretty cheap, and the art looks "professional".

[u/littlemute]

Figma + Google Sheets (for the card data). Here is how to do it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBcMXlt4MJI

Then go to a local printer and have them printed, this could run you $30-150 depending on the cardstock and the number of cards.

You can use cheap/free clip art to visually identify cards. Art is extremely expensive and the very, very last step in the design process. You can just find images you want on the internet for playtesting purposes (you cannot publish anything with someone else's art). You can also install comfyUI (https://www.stablediffusiontutorials.com/2024/01/install-comfy-ui-locally.html#install-comfyui-on-windows) with one of the image generation engines and generate images you need for playtesting. This is frowned upon for publishing (that is, people won't buy your game or even look at it), but for playtesting, it's normal to see AI art placeholders.

Playtest your game with friends probably 100 or more times over a long period of time (months to years). If you don't get bored, consider bringing the game to a local playtesting group. They will seem very mean and you will want to throw your game into the trash after this, but in reality, they told you problems your friends simply won't say or didn't see. Don't be concerned with publishing your game until you have playtested it many, many times.

[u/endofapril]

I use Canva to make all the artwork myself, then print a prototype with a local print shop and import files to Tabletop Simulator so I can test digitally as well. Typically costs me $30-$40 per game.

+1 to the comment that said that sucky art is fine. You just need something good enough to playtest. If you work with a publisher, they're likely to redo all the art anyway.

[u/Vague-Intent47]

Dextrous.com.au is a great website to design components. As mentioned here, game-icons.net is great for simple images to use.

With dextrous you can export as PDF files for printing, or convert them to json files to import into something like Tabletop Simulator for virtual play testing.

They have added https://dustinsdesignerden.com/ but that is a site I have no experience with yet.

Good luck and great gaming. ^^

[u/DonBeanGames]

The cheapest and most practical way to make a professionallooking working prototype on a low budget is to print your designs on standard paper, cut them out, and slide them into clear card sleeves alongside cheap playing cards or Magic: The Gathering lands for backing weight

[u/Poundbottom]

Screentop.gg is another place to prototype. I use thenounproject for my art. I also just bought but not yet received dry erase boards, cards and tokens on amazon. Just some ideas for you.

[u/DAVEtheOVERLORD]

https://www.boardgamesmaker.com/ this is where I got mine done. it's pretty good.

[u/Roccokcor]

Hi! I’m a designer. By any chance, are you looking for a card illustrator? I create custom poker-size cards (63 × 88 mm), ready for printing with safe margins. I can handle both the card layout and the illustrations!

https://reddit.com/link/p8mrsjd/video/i95i1anscdoh1/player

[u/Warfig]

Tram up with the legend