What is BorderCross?BorderCross is a Touhou-based card game intended for 4-9 players. There are 205 cards: 65 characters, 34 pieces of equipment, 44 spell cards, 52 utility cards, 1 status card, and 9 role cards.
Story:The Hakurei Border links the human world with the world of Gensokyo. Also known as the ?Border?, ?The Great Boundary?, or ?Hakurei Barrier?, the border exists to prevent precarious ?Youkai? from snatching humans for the purposes of consumption. The only point at which the border may be legitimately crossed is through the Hakurei Shrine. The border is not impenetrable, though, and must be supervised by ever-vigilant sentinels, for there are those who venture to snatch up a stray human wandering close to the border; or worse yet, those who wish to destroy the border and incite mass chaos between Gensokyo and the human world as was once the case long ago?
Game Overview:The game is played with anywhere from 4 to 9 players, each with their own group-specific objective they must carry out to achieve victory. Players take turns equipping items, charging, and casting spell cards to defeat other players to conquer their opponents and fulfill their objectives.
History:The game?s concept arose on the 4th of January 2011, when a friend of mine and I were conversing about the state of TCG games in general. We originally had plans to create a Touhou TCG of our own, but due to time constraints, resources, and other various aspects of involvement, we could not see our idea to completion. Rather than give up, I turned the concept toward a different direction ? a multiplayer game without the cost commonly associated with playing and maintaining current TCG games.
After many dead ends on coming up with a manageable system for the cards, I settled on borrowing concepts from a fabulous card game my close friends and I enjoyed, which was originally published by Italian publisher daVinci Editrice in 2002, called ?Bang!?. Much of the flow and approach of the game comes from ?Bang!,? but with several system tweaks of my own.
The game?s production somewhat started around January 8th. By the 11th, all of the cards had been entered into Excel for brainstorming and balancing. By the 13th, all cards had text and powers were assigned to characters. Graphical design and artwork searches took somewhere around a week, putting the finishing touches on actual designs around the 18th. After that, cards were fully compiled and data entry began in Photoshop before the 20th. Creation processes were slow due to graduate work beginning to pile up in the beginning of the semester, but finalized card sheets were being assembled and ready for printing by the 26th. Proofreading and editing caused delays, meaning a new set of print sheets being designed before the 30th of January.
The first batch of cards was printed on February 3rd and 4th. Half were cut out individually, by hand, before February 8th. The cards were fully cut out and sleeved on the 12th, ready to play. In its entirety, the project was finished (aside from proofreading, error fixes, and actual printing/play-testing) in approximately four weeks. Since then, I have made various revisions, edits, and grammatical fixes, which will most likely always be subject to tweaks or further edits.
During the course of the project, various individuals were shown bits and pieces to gather unbiased opinions about the game. The purpose of this was to get feedback on individual portions of the design or style without anyone knowing what it was for. Aesthetically and technically, this creates the ?purest? opinions without quickly making judgments simply because it?s X, or Y, or looks like Z. No one person had ever seen the completed product as a whole until February 25th, when the game was played for the first time.
Sample Cards:(The corners are white due to saving small versions as jpgs. Click for full size PNG format.
Characters Equipment Spell Cards Utility Cards: Sample Print Sheet (6mb):http://imasock.pestermom.com/BorderCross/Spells%20Sheet%204.pngKnown Issues:The original card size was placed incorrectly into Photoshop, and instead of 2.5 by 3.5 inch dimensions, I incorrectly set it to 2.5 by 3.375 inches. I also added a 10 pixel buffer to all sides and this caused the cards to print too wide, squeezing the card in on itself when placed in protective sleeves. As a result, the cards had to be sized to 310 dpi rather than 300 dpi to ensure they were not too wide for sleeves. This created a further discrepancy in regard to card height, which now rests somewhere around 1/7th of an inch short of actual card games. If you sleeve these cards, they will be shorter by a bit.
The cards were created in standard RGB 8bit color modes; however, most printers do not print RGB proficiently. Instead, the cards should have been designed from the ground up in CMYK color modes to allow for further color accuracy. If you have Photoshop available for use, printing these cards using the ?Photoshop manages colors? mode instead of ?Printer manages colors?, you will likely see a greater picture and color fidelity. Converting the images to CMYK prior to printing actually causes a greater color loss and the cards appear quite bland, especially on the background colors of the bullet pattern on all the cards, so it is advised to use Photoshop?s management of color options, if possible.
I am only one individual; there are bound to be errors with either grammar or syntax. I have done my best to ensure that most cards retain consistency in terms of wording and description, but there may be some that seem different from others. If this is the case, please e-mail me about it so I can look into it and possibly change the cards wording to reflect a more accurate approach to all the cards. I consider myself to be quite proficient in catching errors, but I?m a mathematician, not a linguist, so I anticipate there will be errors.
BEFORE DOWNLOADINGThe game is not 100% balanced. This is simply due to a lack of playing the game. My friends and I do not have the easiest schedules to work around, especially to get 7-9 of us together to play the same game. If a particular card, ability, character, etc. seems too overpowered, there?s a definite possibility that it is. Do keep in mind that some cards are meant to be strong, and others are meant to be weaker. As mentioned above, I did not intend for cards to be overtly powerful in the sense that they break the game; I doubt I could have come up with an outcome for every situation even if I wanted.
Please contact me or send me an e-mail if there is an issue with a card, or with a certain combination of cards. We are continually playing the game to make further improvements and changes where necessary.I hope that people will play the game and give feedback, because there will be no way to check every outcome on my own or with my friends. The more people that play it, the better for the game's final result. Download the manual first to see if you're even interested in the game before you actually take the time to download a package.
Download the Manual (56 pages):BorderCross v1.1 PDF Manual (2mb)BorderCross v1.1 Docx Manual (6.1mb)BorderCross v1.1 Doc Manual (6.3mb)Download the Game:
Essential Version (162mb)
Contains Print Sheets and Manual:http://imasock.pestermom.com/BorderCross/BorderCross%20v1.1%20Essentials.rarSingle Card Version (344mb)
Contains Print Sheets, Manual, and Single Card images:http://imasock.pestermom.com/BorderCross/BorderCross%20v1.1%20+%20Single%20Cards.rarComplete Version (1.24gb)
Contains Print Sheets, Manual, Single Cards, and all image sources + spell card videos:http://imasock.pestermom.com/BorderCross/BorderCross%20v1.1%20Complete.rarEnjoy,
-Imasock