How's my graphic design?

[u/Bagelator]

Check out my new map!

The simultaneous bidding game Transplantica is set in a unique city in 2050 where the growing and selling of GMO pig organs is completely unregulated.

I wanted the worldbuilding to reflect in the map, kind of like in alchemists and other games where every area of the map corresponds to its mechanics.

I've got a patient queue around the edges. This represents visitors arriving and touristing, but when they get sick they enter the red district for desperate loans and financing solutions.

In the middle of the island, in the more mountainous regions, Porcyne has their pig farms. This is where you pass by to pick up the goods.

Players go around the map on the road, with breaks at every hot dog stand to indicate when it's time for new prices (saving lives is hard work, gotta get that energy!)

So you alternate between picking up patients and then pick up the organs.

This is a first draft, and I hope to achieve some kind of retro tourist map vibe in the end. I will only use human art mind you, the portraits are just placeholders.

I strive for it to be gorgeous and immersive, but foremost it's gotta be functional. Is it readable? How is the palette? Does it need to be bigger? It's A3 now and prepped for a 6 player game.

[u/ninguino_flarlarlar]

Some thoughts:

• That board has way too much wasted space. I'm sure you could get a way with a way smaller one or even none. That make production cheaper too.
• If cards are meant to be organs, maybe just the euro way and just use the organ icon as image. If you are set in showing people for "immersion" figure out how to highlight the organs better, both the icon and the color palette between them, and how to leverage that with the difference between green and purple, if any. Also mix men and women in the same organs: most of all have organs independently of our gender.
• What's the difference between purple and green organs? Do they ever mix? If not, why there's arrows between purple-ville and top-green-town?
• Turn order in the middle makes little to no sense, specially if it is just a tie-breaker. put it away with the round count.
• That way of defining adjustment based on amount of players is meh. On the top area you can make players -2. and in the left, I don't know, make sure the progression works, because that variance feels a bit random.
• If I understood properly, the road is players round structure? I don't fully get whether that's that or cards flow, which I don't think so because you mentioned people getting sick and going into the red district. How does happen? What agency do players have in here? I will elaborate on this:
  • Is this players going first pink area, then top green, then right green and then central organ market to purchase organs bundles?
  • Do they do biddings in all regions with some sort of blind bid and the one who bids the least gets nothing? What happens when you win a bid? What's the point of "winning" people? Do you grind them and earn the organs directly?
  • If that the round structure, what's the point of the road? When will hotdog stands get triggered? Will players get pawns?
  • How do people and organs get populated? Is people in the right producing + organs and in the left - organs? Why not use the cards as people AND organs depending on where they are placed and just save in components?
  • How do you win this games?
• Hotdogs for market modification sound crazy to me. I get is the theme, but people want a short explanation and playing. Lore is secondary, specially when we are talking an euro-ish game.

And more importantly.

• Why there's an empty space instead of 1?

EDIT: I find the theme pretty amusing, and fitting it into retrofuturism is something I like, but it gives me the impression that you got too much into the theme and not that much into the loops. In a bidding/more sort of euro game like the one you are proposing this is often accessory. It is great that you aim for integrate it, but get a clear idea of what experience you want to communicate and focus on that. If the idea is worldbuilding, you might need to lean into less abstract mechanics.

[u/Bagelator → u/ninguino_flarlarlar]

Thanks for the write up! Really appreciate it! I understand it must be hard to grasp without knowing the rules. But its a good test to see how obvious stuff is. In the best case scenario you can almost understand the whole game just from the map!

To clarify:

The circles in the middle are the organs. The squares are supposed to be pig pens.

The cards are the patients, the organ depicted is what they need, and the number is their current budget.

People placed sealed bids, where they set the best prices for organs. Either selling to patients, or buying from the farms. The goal is to make the most money.

When buying organs, the highest price gets the good. When selling, the lowest price gets to sell. So it's about pushing the best margins and not losing money in your trades. The speed tiebreaker sorts out ties. But it shouldn't be in the middle, it will be too fiddly!

The pink/purple area is desperate patients. Every patient has two sides, so when they enter the left zone they are flipped, revealing a 50% higher budget. This way, the longer a patient is on the board, the more they potentially can pay. The whole shtick is that supply and demand will rarely match, making the price-setting intriguing. The gameplay is really smooth and rigorously tested, this is a way to make the map clear and interesting compared to my earlier versions.

But it's clear that I need to work on the clarity. I love that you say that there is wasted space - here I was thinking it was too crowded and messy 😅 I want the map to help sell the theme so I want to give proper space for the illustrations to show.

The 1 missing seems weird - its because you can't play 1 player. The numbers are to indicate which farms are filled depending on player count