Development Diaries: How a father-daughter team created new party card game Betty Two Bricks | Part 1

Photo looking over crowds of people walking between stands at the UK Games Expo 2023 in NEC, Birmingham. On top of the image, in the far left (arranged centrally to the image height) is a beige circle. Inside the beige circle are the words 'Dev Diary 1' in red. The edge of the beige circle has a brown outline. Inside the outline is another, smaller brown circle outline. On the right of the image (central to image height) is a beige circle with the Betty Two Bricks logo. The logo is of an older woman with grey hair, holding up a brick in one gloved hand. She wears a big purple hat with a pink flower on it and blue feathers that droop down off the hat behind her. She wears a pink fur coat and purple gloves that have pearls on them. She wears a green jade earring. Just her face, turned towards the viewer, her shoulders and her one hand holding the brick are visible. She is grinning towards the viewer with mouth open, a single gold tooth with a shine to it can be seen in the corner of her mouth. Around Betty are two circle outlines in brown. Between the smaller and larger circles are the words 'Betty Two Bricks' repeated twice and wrapped to follow the circular shapes.

Recently, we were delighted to reveal our new project: Betty Two Bricks.

The Roaring Twenties-themed party card game for 2—6 players has been brewing behind-the-scenes and we’re now ready to show you what we’ve been hiding under our fedoras.

Join us on a journey back through the past year and learn how we brought Betty (and her bricks) into reality.

 

Image of a large crowd of people around different stands at the UK Games Expo 2023 in NEC, BirminghamIt all began at the 2023 UK Games Expo. Spellbound by the endless colourful stands showing amazing-looking games, UKGE was a real eye-opener to how big and varied the tabletop gaming community really is.

We came to UKGE with a dream: making our very own boardgame. Like many aspiring designers, we started with grand plans for our first game (shhh, we’re still hoping to make them real in the future).

Deciding to attend workshops aimed specifically at potential designers and publishers, we came to ‘Games Design with Manufacturing in Mind’ led by premier board game manufacturer Panda. The workshop brought up great points about what you need to consider when making games – incredibly useful but it did give us a pause on our grand plans.

Panda’s workshop was a good look at game manufacture and went into topics such as understanding how to refine your idea to your target market, why you should reduce the cognitive load on players by using appropriate components and the costs associated with different types of components. 

The image in the top left is square and is of a presentation slide. The slide reads: 'Themes and Ideas. Or: what's the game about?' Under this text is the Monopoly logo. Under the logo is a list. It reads: '1) SUBJECT: it's about becoming very rich. 2) WHAT YOU DO: It's about buying properties and charging rent to bankrupt your friends. 3) MECHANICS: it's about roll & move and set-collection with a last-one-standing win condition. 4) PLAYERS: it's about trading with friends to beat them. 5) SUBTEXT: it's about teaching how big business works. 6) SALES: it's about two hours and £29.95.' The image in the bottom left is square and is of a presentation slide. The slide reads: 'Wikipedia's list of types of board games.' Under this title is a list that reads: '1. Single-player board games. 2. Two-player abstract strategy games. 3. Two-player games. 4. Multi-player elimination games. 5. European race games. 6. Multiplayer games without elimination. 7. Economics and strategy games.' In the top right is a screenshot of the UK Games Expo web page for phone screens. Under the 'Saturday 3 June' tab is an event listed as 'Games Design with Manufacturing in Mind'. The bottom right image is a screenshot of an events listing for UKGE titled 'Games Design Masterclass'.

The second workshop we attended, led by professional game-maker James Wallis, was a thorough look into the processes of game design and started with the history of games. It covered different aspects of design such as themes and structure, types of game mechanics and finished with a fun challenge to design a new game in teams on the clock (ours ended up being a trading card game where players were teachers in a magical school trying to get the best students in their deck).

On the drive back post-Expo, our proverbial cups proverbially runnethed over with thoughts and ideas. What stood out to us was that our grand boardgame idea (again, shhh) might be a tad over-ambitious as a first game coming from a small, indie, family-run business. However, a card game seemed like a good way to begin our design journey.

The car chat drifted and rambled, as car chats do, and we at some point started making our usual in-jokes about Betty “Two Bricks” (whose origins you can discover going to Betty’s Facebook or Instagram). It struck us that Betty would make a great leading lady for a game. And her name was really quite evocative… almost hitting you in the face like a brick… so would be a great inspiration for the theme.

An illustration of Betty "Two Bricks". She is an older woman with grey hair, holding up a brick in one gloved hand. She wears a big purple hat with a pink flower on it and blue feathers that droop down off the hat behind her. She wears a pink fur coat and purple gloves that have pearls on them. She wears a green jade earring. Just her face, turned towards the viewer, her shoulders and her one hand holding the brick are visible. She is grinning towards the viewer with mouth open, a single gold tooth with a shine to it can be seen in the corner of her mouth.

With theme established (and many jokes about bricks later), we started casually sketching out how the game would play. As long-time enjoyers of Exploding Kittens and Agatha Christie's Death on the Cards, we wanted Betty to also be a fun, quick, [more than] slightly chaotic party card game.

After getting back home, we wrote out the rules and general card ideas on a side of A4, the more mathematical amongst us sketching out a table to work out the number of cards we’d need. Cutting up paper into shapes that vaguely resembled cards, we penned some quick descriptions and used the freely stolen card sleeves (thanks Panda!) to play and test the first prototype.

Photo of a piece of slightly crumpled white paper. The writing on it is small and indistinct in a black pen. In the top right of the page, a 6 x 10 table is drawn on.

Keep your peepers peeled for Development Diary 2 where we’ll uncover the design of the first prototype and how it evolved thanks to playtesting. 

Betty Two Bricks is launching at the UK Games Expo on 31 May 2024. Find us there at Stand 2-49! Find out more about the game here.

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