The Prodigious Process of Paper Prototyping

As a designer, one of the greatest advantages of working on Visions of Zosimos is being able to test the game before any of the assets have been made. For most video games, paper prototyping can be a rather tedious process and rapid prototyping in-engine may be the only way to properly test the mechanics in your game.  Because Visions of Zosimos is essentially a board game and a card game, designers can easily recreate, what would be in engine, on paper.

Don't get me wrong, setting up these sessions suck.  Redrawing our maps and making cards from hand takes up a lot of time. However, it takes less time to write stats on a piece of paper than code them in engine.  It is also easier to take models from preexisting games or making paper tokens than making 3D models and animations. Being able to test new card abilities, bosses and map types is quick and fun.  Being able to balance out cards is incredibly easy with paper prototyping.

The design team has adopted this technique relatively recently and we have seen vast improvements and efficiency in production.  We have been testing out a new map, bosses and our newest Void deck against our cards we have made previously. We have also been able to test our in-engine map, the Blighted Mire, with these new cards and improved boss mechanics making it easy to make changes on the fly.  Once we have balanced and decided what works best, we can have programmers make the cards work without all of the frustration of making them redo them.

Paper prototyping has also allowed us to take our game on the go and get local gamers to test our game. This process allows us to get feedback right away for our card mechanics and make changes us designers may not have thought of. After all, the player is always right!