Sometimes you spend one thousand years revising the same piece of a game (or movie or book or painting or…) over and over until you feel like your brain is leaking out your ears. By the end of this essay, I hope to give you a thorough taste of my current brain leakage.
In my upcoming game Space Fam, you play as the plucky crew of a spaceship trying to get by while keeping out of reach of the oppressive Company that runs your part of space. It’s mostly a cozy game of found family. The vibes are very The Long Way To a Small, Angry Planet.
Space Fam’s a Firebrands game, which means gameplay mostly consists of taking turns choosing from a list or “menu” of pre-fabricated scenes. I’ve played a bunch of Firebrands games, I like the format a lot, but I think most of them miss the chance for a real good menu page. Sure, you can just list all the scenes somewhere (which is more than some Firebrands games even provide), but players are gonna come back to that page a lot, and I want them to have the best experience they can while there. That means conveying a lot of information about the scenes in a small space: you want all the scenes on one page, but you also want people to be able to get whatever info they’re looking for at a glance.
In my experience, people change up what criteria they’re using to pick the next scene pretty frequently. Sometimes it’s player count: we just had a couple small scenes, so I know I want to pick a big group scene. Or I know I want an intimate moment with my love interest, so I’m looking for two player scenes.
Other times it’s more vibes: we just an intense scene, so I know I want some comedy. Or Sophie over there has a whole rebels plotline going on, and I want to find something that’ll poke that button.
And sometimes, at least in Space Fam, it’s about responding very directly to the fiction. If someone got injured in the last scene, we really should pick the “go to the doctor” scene this time. Even just conveying that there is a doctor scene to pick isn’t trivial!
With that background, let’s take a look at how this game’s scenes menu has evolved.
Now, your first reaction to this might be “Sam, this menu doesn’t do any of the things you just said you wanted it to,” and to that I would reply “you’re absolutely right.” How do you think I learned those things? By fucking around with designs and looking at what I didn’t like.
Space Fam is currently ~30 pages long of this size, but this first version was only 4 pages including a character sheet. Instead of a menu that acts as a kind of index, this menu just contains the complete text of each scene. My minimalism is showing.
I think there is something interesting to the idea that you can do an entire Firebrands scene in a paragraph, but ultimately I wanted more scenes than this list, and they weren’t going to all fit on one page.
I kinda miss this color scheme. You can’t see it on this page, but I had some lines and filigree on a couple of the others that, paired with these colors, was going for a “you’re looking at an in-universe digital screen” look. I think it’s good I pulled away from that because I’m not a Tim Denee level of graphic designer, but I do kinda miss the feel of it. You can see the evolution of it in this next version:
Several new scenes make an appearance here, and you can see everything is now divided up into two groups by player count. It’s interesting going back through these, because maybe I prefer that to where I ended up? We’ll come back to that, but suffice to say that space is at a premium here, and I’m surprised how much negative space I was able to hang on to here. I like that.
I tried to make each scene name + flavor text feel like a button on a screen. I don’t think it quite works in those terms, but I don’t hate the result. Notably all the scene names are clickable hotlinks to the page that scene is on later in the pdf. That’s true going forward. More hotlinks in pdfs; they’re great.
This is also when I started looking at Art of the Menu for inspiration. This is definitely a menu!
The colors here do have a logic to them, I promise. The red text is mechanical and the orange text is flavorful. Did anyone understand that other than me? They did not.
I’d also adjusted the orange and blue here, and I don’t remember why. I think I like the colors on the first one better, though these are probably more legible. That’s probably why I made the change. Who knows.
At some point I threw out everything I was doing. I think what I had was fine, but I knew I could do better (even if this is a lateral move), and I needed something to do while rewatching the entirety of Seinfeld.
Those numbers next to each scene are temp page numbers. I just wanted something there to take up space, and that seemed useful if the pdf hotlinks weren’t your jam.
Some new categories here. “Advanced” didn’t feel right, though those scenes are indeed a little more complicated. I like the little overlap thing I’m doing with that middle column of page numbers. Maybe it’s too cute, but I dunno, I like it.
I like pulling out the Trouble scenes, which are basically consequence scenes. If you fuck up while doing a Job, you have to do a scene where bad shit is going on. I’m really proud of that as an alternative to, like, hit points or a harm system. I like separating them out so you know there’s something special about them.
Still a second color. At least this time it makes more sense; I want to make sure you remember that you have to do a Job after every third scene, so the text is in a brighter color so you don’t miss it. Sure.
It’s subtle, but you can see in this version I’d put a texture over the background. Someone had suggested that the book should have the feel of fridge magnet poetry on a space ship’s bulkhead. I think that’s right, but again, in retrospect I don’t think I’m good enough to pull it off.
Listen, they’re not all winners.
I don’t know what I was thinking with, like, most of this. This is a two page spread where the pages are square. I think I did that because I wanted to switch to a book format but also wanted to preserve some page formats I’d done that weren’t going to work in a fully vertical layout?
Trouble up there replaced Jobs in this version - that’ll revert later. I guess it’s rotated just so it’ll fit?
I like that the Coda Questions are actually on the spread here as a reminder that you’re supposed to do them.
I can’t look at this one anymore, let’s move on.
Another complete rework! I think I was watching Party Down this time? We’re still in an 8.5x11 layout instead of a proper book, I think because I’m so depressed about the idea of actually publishing. I think this format is genuinely better for a digital only product! And maybe I’ll even stick to my guns on that! But also I like this game and maybe want to see it up on drivethrurpg print on demand… I’m getting ahead of myself again.
Some stuff to like here. I like the return to a grid of scenes. The player counts are too thick and busy, but I like the theory of it. The color coding, as usual, doesn’t make sense, but at least I explained myself at the bottom this time. The palette is plain but functional.
I do not explain myself with the little dotted line and circle up top. That’s supposed to mean “these two are good first scenes.” I had this idea back when I was trying to do the “fridge poetry on bulkhead” look that I could have a little dotted line that threaded through all the scenes that was a suggested order for your campaign. Kinda neat. Super distracting once you revert to this minimalistic look.
That all said, I like the linework and cleanness of this more than any of the options before. And so I kept it for our final version today…
I’m quite happy with this one! Some new additions in “Previously On…” and “Next Time On…”, plus Guilt Limit Breaks have always been a thing I just didn’t fit into the menu, and now they’re here. I like emphasizing the “Triggered Scenes” with a splash of color to try and make sure people check every time if they’re supposed to do one of those.
I gave up on the idea of Doctor’s Orders, Make Ends Meet, and Repair Project being labeled “Trouble Scenes” or whatever and just put the rules into the Jobs section later on that if you fuck up you have to pick those scenes. Since the only time you have that kind of requirement is coming out of a Job, it’s fine to just have the info about it at the end of Jobs.
This still has a pretty simple color scheme (in addition to the green there’s a subtle yellow background on the Triggered Scenes), but it doesn’t feel as generic to me as the blue and red. Feels a bit more sci-fi, or at least cozy. I’ve always wanted the look for this game to be “cottagecore in space,” and I like this color scheme for that.
Nice to find room for some extra details in this one like the “if you pick a scene a second time, set it while you’re hiding from the authorities.” That’s one of those rules that I like but am certain everyone will forget if it’s not on the menu - they’ll read it elsewhere once, play half the campaign, and have forgotten by the time they need it. Honestly, that’s probably still true, but I’ll sleep better at night this way.
I imagine I could do a better job ordering the scenes in this. Right now there are clumps of similar scenes that exist in my head. A Silly Argument and Family Meal remain good first choices, and those two plus Heart to Heart is a good first trio. In Another Life and Meanwhile both take place outside your spaceship and crew. Planetside and Take on a Traveler flow together nicely. All those old Tough Times scenes are lined up together. But no one other than me knows those things.
And that brings us up to the present! I feel like I’ve learned a lot doing all these revisions, but also, no one should do this many styles on anything. This has very much been a “learn how to use indesign” project for me more than a proper layout project.
Looking to the future, I think I do have one more revision to do. I want to at least try out a proper vertical book layout, and that means another draft, even if I ultimately return to this last version. I’m pretty happy with the look and color scheme though, so I think another complete overhaul is unlikely.
And that’s the Space Fam scenes menu. Check on your brain and ears, hope this was interesting, and feel free to give me some of that sweet, sweet feedback on these designs if you’re so moved to.