We pitched one of the most enjoyable presentations of the year. There were many laughs as tales were told about filthy casual gamers, relatable school memes, and the quirky students of Savant Nouveau. Furthermore, we are very proud to announce that we were awarded an actual TROPHY!!! The 2017 BFA Thesis Faculty Award was given to us for the “most complete,” “most out-of-the-box” (ironic because we come in a box) project, and we were all surprised and overjoyed. Our gallery was extremely successful as well! We put out a ballot box to collect votes for the student body president. Poll results are coming, so keep checking in! We gave away many business cards, people flipped through the binder that held our deck, and many a sticker was taken by both child and adult alike. We had an awesome box that blew everyone away. Whether or not we can pull off a similar look for actual production is up in the air, but it still looks awesome as a prototype! We are working on forming an LLC to make business official. Now that our project has wrapped as a Thesis project and is turning into a project with actual launching potential, we are very excited to delve deeper into brave mechanics changes, ambitious art improvements, and learn about all sorts of business/marketing strategies.
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For the past few months, we’ve really been struggling to meet our concept art deadline. :^) And at a point of ultimate burnout, Protospiel… gave us life inside. Protospiel 2017 was super fun and educational! We gathered good feedback from players and industry professionals alike. People were impressed by our first effort, and we gave David Silverman honorable mentions for mentoring us. Without the support of our mentor and our classmates, our positive turnout would not have been possible! Protospiel helped us meet encouraging, helpful, and talented new friends. By the time the event ended, our game had totally transformed!! Wow!!!!!! SUGOI!!!
In preparation for Protospiel, we prepared many assets to make our presentation look as presentable and engaging as possible. Beth and Pam coordinated the insane operation, and we met our deadline on time!
On Ranran’s birthday, she and Tara helped Pam put together 500 cards for the game sets while printing business cards, and Shia made Kelly’s poster shine. Ranran then took home the rest of the stickers, cutting out roughly 500 stickers by herself. The rest of the physical prepwork was largely done at Pam’s house. Pam, Beth, and moms labored until 2 AM cutting, gluing, and sealing brochures. We couldn’t have finished without our MVP moms!! Changing the GameIt’s been a revolutionary few weeks here at Savant Nouveau! Since our last update, we’ve made tons of progress, and worked on tons of playtesting! Firstly, we acquired Instructional Designer and Indie Game Developer David Silverman as our Game Mechanics mentor. Secondly, we made frequent visits to our local Game Kastle for marketing and publicity research. Thirdly, we completely re-conceptualized our project from the ground up. Savant Nouveau is no longer a board game. Instead, we've re-imagined our project into a science fiction strategy card game. After meeting with our mentor, David Silverman, we decided to see how we could implement his feedback to make our game more engaging. Therefore, we’ve gone through some major hauls. Click the link below to view our updated rulebook. Savant Nouveau (Version 1.0) Rule Book - [PDF - 413 KB]In the past month, we've been playtesting with several different groups. Many of our classmates volunteered to help us identify major game-breakers. Thanks to Jessica Icy Tang, Daniel Gonzales, Leslie Crill, and Nelson Kuang for playtesting and giving us feedback! We are implementing quite a few changes...
We played two games today, and made a list of changes to enact. In the first game, after re-balancing material gain, Tara and Nelson were on the luckier side, and got to make all of their inventions...
Pitch FeedbackCourtney Granner stated that the pitch was almost more impressive than the game, because we had neglected the game mechanics in favor of pushing up the visual development, assuming that the panelists would be able to give us more feedback on that side of the project.
We are working on bringing our game mechanics up to the level of our visual development. Alice Carter was impressed with how humorous and sophisticated our project is. She was also thrilled with how much Ranran Lu and Xiao Zhou had improved artistically since taking her tree painting class several semesters ago. She wasn't quite clear with our gameplay as well, despite our video efforts. While our visuals were nice, she noted that our characters felt alien to the board, partially because we hadn't style tested yet. Therefore, we will make sure that the finished characters have dialogue with the board and cards. Randy Dutra stated that our game was visually nice to look at! Jeff Biancalana said that our game seemed like a movie that was later made into a board game because of the way we world built. We took this as a largely positive comment, though also noting that our gameplay needs more attention. Rex Grignon said that our art is nice to look at, and that the direction we're headed in is obvious. Spyros Tsiounis pointed out that most of our academy could be more referenced by realism, and that the hallucinogen in the midst of other engineered creations was jarring. For example, Cal universities specialize in a singular type, such as engineering, or medicine, but never all sciences at once. Going forward we will clarify that our university is heavily fantastical, only loosely based in reality. "Your future is bright, you’re full of potential, and you’re bound to succeed!!
However, you soon discover that you must fight against brutal campus bureaucracy and trample over your peers to claw to the top of your class for graduation." Savant Nouveau (working title) is a strategy board game inspired by the college experience. In August 2016, during BFA year at SJSU, seven visual development students paid homage to their days of struggle through an elegant art nouveau game with competitive resource gathering, invention crafting, and hilariously relatable undertones. Together they founded the prestigious Academy, where many youthful Savant Nouveau come to learn. |
BloggersWelcome to Savant Nouveau's development blog! Entries are written by Elizabeth Li and Pamela Yeung.
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