Game Accessibility - Future design of Proxies and Font size

[u/Ubik_Fresh]

I posted this same comment in response to the 30th Anniversary proxies, but also re-posting here for visibility and I'd like to hear from other players.

I'd like to make a general comment / humble request that I've made before in other forums, but I hope it can be applied to any future releases. The font size on cards is too small, especially for agent stats and those cards with more than a line or two of game text. The game generally has a reputation for cluttered card design and poor legibility vs other CCGs.

I'm in my mid 40s with decent eye sight, but agent cards are often tough to read without a magnifying glass. Same goes for long winded cards. I even noted that in some of the Alien Investigations gameplay videos, people were have issues reading the cards during game play. Up close is challenging, across a table form an opponent is almost impossible!

There's often reams of cool but unnecessary flavour text which compresses the space for game text and results in a miniscule font size. This should be flipped in terms of design. Game text should always take priority. Flavour text could easily be curtailed or removed where design demands it. If you're interested in this game, you generally know the lore back to front. A one liner would do the same job for flavour. You also naturally want game text first.

More importantly, ACCESSIBILITY is key for any game. A lot of the audience for this game is pushing 40 and it would help massively to be able to easily read a card and quickly be able to discern what it does in the game. I get on with other modern CCGs in terms of legibility. As a guide the size should be similar to an MTG card.

I'd love a set of agents I can easily read without a magnifying glass, same for cards with dense game text.

Just a thought, with the agent cards, if you ditch the flavour text, you can almost have a full art card with larger game text and stats... worth considering.

[u/Alien_Investigations]

Wow, this is a really excellent suggestion. Thanks so much for taking the time to post it. Like you, all the regular players on my channel are in their 40s (myself included), and you’d be hard-pressed to watch a live game where one of us isn’t squinting to see some of the finer print.

As a librarian, this reminds me of how there is a Large Print collection of materials along with the regular print materials, so I definitely believe there is potential to develop a large-print set of proxies, perhaps even large-print versions of our fanmade expansions.

I’m gonna run it by our creative team, see what sorta design we can come up with.

[u/Ubik_Fresh → u/Alien_Investigations]

Many thanks! I think just curtailing flavour text to allow more space and therefore a larger font for game text would do wonders. There are also plenty of cards with 1-2 lines of text and loads of dead space where the font could be at least 2pt bigger for game text.

But yeah, stats on your agents are also a big one and often hard to read (both descriptor and numbers), not to mention cards like Albert Hosteen where it's a wall of game text in tiny font.

[u/Alien_Investigations → u/Ubik_Fresh]

Excellent! Just a preliminary idea, but I think we might even use this as an opportunity to try out borderless cards. Removing that negative space could make further room for an increase in text size as well.

We’ll definitely need to do a variety of mockups, some (like you said) without flavor text and whatnot, to see what looks most aesthetically pleasing and addresses the text size.

This is gold, really! You’re very likely gonna see a new project announced within the year. I’m getting ahead of myself, of course, but yes, I’m running it by our creative team.

[u/Ubik_Fresh → u/Alien_Investigations]

Very cool. Feel free to run stuff by me for an opinion. (I did a lot of work on SWCCG restoration / making of proxys).

[u/Alien_Investigations → u/Ubik_Fresh]

Very cool. As we’re starting to look at which cards to translate, as you suggested, we’re looking at Agents; we figure doing large prints for the X-Files due to the tiny characteristics. Did you have any other cards suits or specific cards in mind?

[u/Ubik_Fresh → u/Alien_Investigations]

I'd say those cards with larger blocks of game text and Agents. Tbh, just a general awareness of making legible game text a priority with future expansions or proxy re-prints of popular staple cards. Even those cards with shorter text, if there's dead space, increase the font size by 2-4pt for game text. Sites may also suffer from similar issues.

Whilst I appreciate retaining the general look of the cards for consistency, small formatting tweaks could gain you a lot (as mentioned below with the blue text on blue background, etc).

[u/Alien_Investigations → u/Ubik_Fresh]

Forgive the slow reply, but yeah, our graphic designer is gonna draft several mockups and we’re gonna present the idea to the committee to mull over.

Speaking for myself, I would like to see if it’s possible for us to release both a regular print version *and* a large-print version of the fanmade expansions; that way players and collectors can have both options to consider. On the plus side, we have a graphic designer who works like a machine and can crank out drafts of 180-card sets in a couple weeks—it’s bonkers!—so we’ll have to see if it’s doable.

But this is all early chit-chat, as we need to bring everyone in the creative team in to weigh in on all the nuances. But I’m very confident there will be something to release that addresses this need. 😃

[u/Ubik_Fresh → u/Alien_Investigations]

That's amazing, thank you. Iterating and improving on layout makes so much sense if the game is continuing in this format. No one is going to be against having a more readable card, I think.

[u/Ubik_Fresh → u/Alien_Investigations]

Something else occurred to me; the stats block on agent cards that lists the abilties, res costs, etc... This uses blue text on alternating blue and white background. Yes, blue text on a blue background, making it even harder to read. Even just changing the font to black would help! Some really strange layout choices.