Kaamos Prototype: One Month to Go! Part 1: the Cards

LinCon and SAGA, the Swedish Annual game Design Awards competition where Kaamos is competing are now one month away, and it is time to create the final components for the game!
To celebrate, I thought it would be fun to take you behind the scenes and show how the prototype is coming together, piece by piece. In this first post, we will dive into one of the most crucial parts: the cards.

Prototype vs. Final Product

When making a prototype, it is important to keep one thing in mind: it will not look like a final, professional product — and that is absolutely fine.
A prototype is all about testing: it needs to be practical, functional, and easy to use, especially during playtests. Beauty comes later. Right now, the question is: Is the game fun? Is the user interface clear? Does it work the way it should? Do the components tie in with the chosen theme?

a white box containing 2 stacks of cards, several color pouched and some cardboard scoring tiles — *Bit by bit, the box is filling in…*

A Year of Cards

The cards for Kaamos have already lived through many versions. Some of the early ones are so worn out from playtesting that they are literally falling apart.
The tactile drawings were locked in months ago after careful testing and redesigning. So far, I had used 120gsm paper for the cards, which is slightly thicker than printer paper. It was great for quick edits, yet sturdy enough to ”keep the dots” even after intensive manipulations by experienced and less experienced users (no, pushing harder won’t make the dots easier to feel!).
For this final prototype, I wanted something stronger and easier to handle, especially since the cards will once again go through a lot of hands at the convention.

Color cards in Finnish, with braille and tactile markings — These are one of the first color versions. The cards are in Finnish. The hare and the ptarmigan are still facing the same way. I flipped the bird to make them more distinguishable by touch. There is still a raised first letter in the roman text. I dropped that raised letter entirely, as it turned out to be more confusing than helpful both for braille readers and novice tactile users.

The Production Process

It all starts at the computer. I created the cards in Inkscape, working with several layers: the background, the image layer, the embossing elements, and the cut lines. Having everything separated makes it much easier later on when I have to save each layer in a different format.

nshot of Inkscape showing on the right layers and their content, and on the left the actual image with all the shapes, cut lines and backgrounds

When the design is ready, I first print the backgrounds, silhouettes and text onto 250gsm paper with a laser printer. Thicker than regular paper, but still flexible enough for cards.

a printed sheet containing 9 cards resting in the printer — In total, the game consists of 108 cards and 9 different species. Reflecting the natural balance of ecosystems, the game features a greater number of prey and plant cards compared to predator cards, This is why I don’t have all 9 species on one single 9 card sheet.

Then comes the fun (and sometimes frustrating!) part: embossing.
I use TactileView software to turn the embossing layer into raised dots, and an Index Everest DV5 embosser to bring them to life.
It took a lot of trial and error to get the embossing exactly where I wanted it — adjusting the designs millimeter by millimeter to line up perfectly with the printed cards.

screenshot of TactileView, the program I use to convert drawings into raised dots images for embossing. The program can be fully operated using a speech synthesis — *TactileView can easily be navigated using a speech synthesis too*

This is also where I add the Braille text. Fun fact: you cannot just shrink or stretch Braille! It has very strict size standards to stay readable.
To make it fit, I chose to shorten some names: in English for instance, I only brailled ”hare” instead of ”mountain hare,” and in Swedish, I skipped all the ”fjäll” prefixes.

several braille cells with their legal measurements: 1,2 mm dot diameter, 2,5 mm between the center of the dots both vertically and horizontally, 6 mm between the centers of dots in the same position in 2 adjacent braille cells — You cannot do what you want with braille sizes! And if ”fjälluggla” does not fit on the card, well, either shorten the name (and remember to specify that in your rulebook), or find another species.

Making the Cards Sturdier

Before cutting the cards out, I added a layer of sticker paper to the back of each sheet.
This protects the embossed dots from tearing the paper, especially in the places where the dots are close together like the raised top lines differentiating the 3 card categories, predator, prey or plant. As a bonus, this also hides the tactile patterns from the back, making it harder for sighted players to accidentally ”peek” at the reverse side and guess your cards.

an A4 sheet with the 9 cards printed and embossed, as well as an A4 blue sticker sheet ready to be applied to the back

When tactile cards like braille UNO or braille playing cards are professionally produced, embossing is done directly onto the special cardstock used for playing cards. This means that the dots can technically be seen from the reverse side. This can be mitigated by using intricate patterns/color changes on the back of the cards for instance.

the reverse side of braille UNO cards — dots are slightly visible on the reverse of the commercial braille UNO cards

Cutting the Cards

Finally, I cut the cards with a Cricut machine. Like everything else, that also took a few rounds of adjusting to make sure the cuts were aligned with the artwork and embossing.
After many, many tests, the results came together beautifully.

in this picture, you can notice the shorter names in braille: hare instead of mountain hare, lemming instead of Norway lemming, owl instead of snowy owl, fox instead of arctic fox. Luckily, ptarmigan is just short enough to fit onto the card!

Ready for LinCon!

The final count? 108 cards in English and 108 cards in Swedish — ready for players to explore the world of Kaamos through touch and sight.

In the next posts, I will show you how the playing board and scoring tiles were created , how I chose the point tokens, and share more behind-the-scenes photos from the process. Stay tuned!

Learn more about SAGA and the games competing at https://saga.boardgamedesign.se/sida/home.html