Hey! I made Scrappet Kaiser Princess last year (the 1p board game; I actually cleaned up and revised the rulebook a few months ago while I waited for this jam to begin, so you can check it out if you'd like). I'm designing another board game this year!

Here's a little development video explaining a little bit of the design process and basic rules, then showing off a few rounds of gameplay (tl;dw below):

So with this year's theme, none of the characters were clear picks for a board game design (unlike how Ultra Mint was last year because cards). I ended up looking into game mechanics and thinking of a tone I wanted to go for. I wanted to work with dice and the idea of action drafting was interesting to me, plus I was inspired to make something with a Cowboy Bebop vibe. To more successfully capture that idea of being in a somewhat dysfunctional crew of bounty hunters, I decided to design the game for 3 players. I'm working with meBID again this year to create a digital version of the game to be played on stream with AI opponents at least, so no worries about needing to wrangle a few extra players to play for the showcase. Basically, the game involves the players drafting from a pool of actions (fighting over who does what chores on the spaceship or whatnot) then performing those actions, and the player with the most reputation points at the end of 6 rounds will win.

Since it's a 3 player game, there are 3 different characters to choose from. Whichever of the 3 characters wins, the game will play that character's ending (sort of like an arcade mode in a fighting game). While Sumiv is technically the star of the game, the other two characters (Jebbrey and Gloz) will still have endings that tie into the original Steel Love story and will (hopefully) fit within the rules of the jam. I plan on each of these endings to be canon for the game, and none of them will contradict each other. It's essentially going to be like how Cowboy Bebop reveals the backstory of its characters, and what their future holds will have strong implications (and will hopefully inspire the author to write book 12).

Anyway, I'll leave it at that for now. I'm currently adjusting the design and tweaking numbers and abilities, so it's not much to look at atm. Hopefully I'll have a rulebook next time (week?) and I'll start doodling some characters designs, and maybe I'll even open it up for some playtesting! See you guys around!

The design is in a good spot! I made a quick (lol) explanation of the rules and did a little (lol) runthrough of how the game plays:

It's been a week, so I should give a little update.

It's quiet here, mostly because a lot of the action is on the discord. Last year, I was also juggling doing graphic design and art for three different versions of SKP (the printable version, the online pcio version, and the digital version). While I still plan to develop a printable version, I'm putting a lot more effort on helping meBID make the digital version look good. I was also able to get BIG_FR0G's help with the artwork for the different endings, so that will look amazing. The visuals are coming along. Graphic design is almost done: there are a few more card templates I need to put together. Then comes the art for the characters, targets, and weapons. Then hopefully a nice splash art for the title screen (I'm still really happy with how well Scrappet Kaiser Princess's came out). I'm a little worried about getting all the art done, as I was just informed that I will have a lot less free time this next week than I expected, but I've been going at a good pace, and not having to worry about artwork for the endings is a huge relief. And those endings are important! I couldn't really fit the story I wanted into the gameplay or the rulebook this time, so I can't imagine what I would have done without help. I'm pretty excited for when this finally releases.

I mentioned earlier that I'm focusing mostly on the digital version for the jam. It looks like I won't have the printable version finished by the time the jam ends (I would need to make a board, character sheets, tokens, and card backs in addition to what I'm already got to do), but I'll try to get it out soon after. Not sure if I'll make a really nice pcio version like I did with SKP, since the digital version will likely have local play (and theoretically you can just share your screen because there's no hidden information), but... we'll see how I feel after I finish the printable version.

Anyway, most of the stuff I would have to show are little mockups or card templates. Not too interesting. So here's some icons I made of the three characters; a little sneak peak at the character designs I've got to figure out the colors for. Oh and also the logo. See you guys next week...? Maybe? Not sure if I'll make another post here because I might be frantically doodling, but I'll try to show off some of those drawings next time

Cutting it close! I have finished all of my art (afaik) and I decided that I actually do need to whip up a pcio version to make a proper tutorial video for the game page. So I've been working on that. I might have to skip working on card backs for that but whenever I make them for the print and play I'll port those in. I'm hoping to record an online gameplay session with my friends as well, so you guys will get to see how the game works with actual people playing.

About the physical version, I realize there might be some challenges in bringing it to life. Notably research. In the prototype research is a token, but in a physical space it would be hard to keep track of a ton of tiny little tokens, especially if you need to keep track of it to properly math out probabilities. So I'll have to figure out a cleaner way to handle that... Maybe using a paper clip or something...

As for the digital version, meBID is working hard on it. I recently received a prototype and have been providing feedback on rules questions and design stuff and bugs and whatnot. I'm mainly excited to see the story brought to life via the endings. I might have mentioned it in a video before, but if not, the game will have multiple endings. The ending will be different depending on the character you choose, along with whether you win or lose; meaning that there will be 6 endings! And all of them are canon (for this game)! So I was pretty inspired by the arcade endings of BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger. The endings of that game are all flashbacks(?) revealing some lore about the world or the character. That's the approach I went for with the endings: On a loss, the ending will show a flashback/back story of your chosen character (from the viewpoint of a different character), while a win will show a character's future/true ending. That true ending should tie back into the main Steel Love plot and hopefully give an interesting hook for a potential book 12. For the sake of the stream, the plan is to have all the endings unlock after completing a game so you guys can see the entire story that bookends the board game experience.

So how about art then? Here's a look at some of the targets:

Not sure if you guys will notice but the dude on the right also appeared as a scrappet in my previous board game. He seems a lot nicer in this version though.

And here's the title screen, and a look at the main trio:

Oh yeah! Speaking of the title, I guess I never really explained where the name "Stardust Butterfly" came from. Honestly I was looking at random shoegaze song titles and picked words I thought were cool and ended up with that. I don't remember where "stardust" came from but "butterfly" came from "Butterfly Effect" by RAY. I also thought about how in the mythology of different cultures, butterflies are tied with souls and rebirth. So it's fitting how the crew are all essentially lost, wandering souls waiting for their "rebirth"... Something like that. Anyway, I think it's a cool title and it's fun to say so that's that.

So yeah, I've got to get back to work. Hopefully everything will come together in time! See you guys on Saturday!