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Added at 8:57pm, 13/05/2025.

This page is pretty image-heavy! If you're reading this using mobile data, a dial-up connection, or carrier pigeon... consider yourself warned.

Table of Contents

Hastily added at roughly 7:40pm, 13/05/2025.

I'm going to add my most recent additions to the top of the page, so this one might get a bit long. With that in mind, I'll add links to different anchor points for each individual post.

• Super Ultra Hyper Card Clash II Turbo EX+ HD Remix
• First Post

Super Ultra Hyper Card Clash II Turbo EX+ HD Remix!

Posted at around 5pm, 13/05/2025. Edited continually since then. Current edit; 23:19, 13/05/2025.

This post is probably a little more structured in nature. Specifically, it's about the development process behind one of my latest microprojects; Card Clash - but I'll admit, the process of development was a little bit all-over-the-place. Mainly, it was in response to an upcoming degree show you'll find me at on June 6th; given there's likely going to be professionals there, I found it vitally important to make a good impression.

One way to do that? A business card; a little memento by which people can remember you, contact you, and fill up their wallets. It's like Pokémon, but instead of monsters, you collect salarymen and freelancers. (Someone should make a game like that...) Of course, the issue with business cards is that everyone has them, so you kind of want yours to be memorable. Some people have done some pretty wild things; this guy made his business card into a functioning MIDI stylophone, for instance.

"Oh my God, it even has a USB port..."

That said; I'm not a skilled electrical engineer, nor do I want each individual business card to cost around £10, so I'd need to think of something else. Back to square one, as it were. But then, it hit me; I'm a game designer. And there's such a thing as "card games". So... what if my business cards were to constitute a component of a game in of themselves? It's not an entirely awful concept in principle; while immensely limited in some ways, I'm the sort to think that limitations can breed a lot of creativity. With that, I had a goal in mind. A possibly insane one, but a goal nonetheless.

Create a fun and memorable game limited entirely to the form factor of a business card.

So, some ground rules. Obvious thoughts that occurred to me included;

• The cards should not deviate from standard 55mm x 85mm measurements. Rounded corners are fine, but they need to fit in an average wallet.
• Each person shouldn't ever need more than one card to play. Why would anyone ever want multiple business cards from one person?
• The game should be simple, requiring minimal setup and components. That also means nothing like dice, coins, etc. - it ought to be self-contained.
• Cards shouldn't need unique printing elements, as a matter of cost. I can deviate from this a little, but something like a unique seed for each card is untenable.
• Goes without saying, but the game also needs to actually be fun. I can't stress this enough. It's going to cement people's lasting impressions of me.

That's... a lot of limitations. I still think this is doable, though. Come to think of it, that semi-sarcastic comment I made about business cards being like "adult Pokémon" could be a neat starting point; they're inherently collectable in nature. That said, making a "game" of other people's details would likely be in bad taste; so it's instead probably better to consider other ways that collectables have been gamified.

Gogo's Crazy Bones was a craze back in the 90s and again in the 2010s, with the main collectable element being the hundreds of little plastic guys you'd get in blind-bags (of whom some would be rarer than others.) These little guys were cheap to get a hold of, simple in terms of design and printing, and had a couple of cool elements relating to them; including a game based loosely on knucklebones and its deriviatives (like jacks, astragaloi, etc.) It's simple enough - you and your opponent set up two parallel lines of toys, then take turns flicking them into each other - but that simplicity was a huge appeal behind the game.

Is it just me who remembers these being really painful to flick? Or am I just a wuss...

Maybe the idea of flicking cards into one another could work? The difference is that there's a limited number of cards we can use - one per person - but this could be perhaps offset using a score counter of some kind. And, well... I'm something of a fan of fighting games (even if I'm not particularly good at them!), and the idea of my business card literally being a fighting game of some kind just seems like a lot of fun. That aside, the Gogo's influence lends really well to the idea of cards as collectables; even if people aren't going to be hunting down "special" variants, a couple of different "characters" could work well to provide variety during gameplay.

Another thought comes to mind; would it be possible to make these cards stand? I don't think a "tent" fold would work well (a big crease line down the middle of your card would be scruffy), but you could potentially make two cuts and three folds along the bottom of the card in order to create "feet" for it to stand on. This also comes with marginally less stability, which makes it slightly easier to knock the cards down, but just enough to make it possible for them to stand unassisted.

Here's a quick diagram I threw together in PowerPoint. Not measured out yet, but you'll cut along the red lines, while you fold along the white ones; consider the solid white line a "valley" fold and the dotted white like a "mountain" fold, with the two outside flaps working as the character's feet visible from the front while the inner flap works as a "back foot" for stability. Blue and green distinguish between character's torso and head. Design can of course be tweaked as needed; inspiration from LEGO minifigure printing may be smart.

This is obviously going to need some work; I'll need to test a couple of specific measurements to see which works best. Ideally, I don't want the cut/folded regions to be too large, because the rest of the card would work well for storing contact information on the back; the attached diagram is just the "front" of it, and it still needs to work as an actual business card. That said, I'm guessing a roughly 12.5mm² "back foot" would work fineish. (Note that this section was written prior to test cuts.

That being said, there's two other things to give consideration beyond the basic concept. The first point; characters. It occurred to me while I was conceptualising this that characters are going to be a great way to get people invested in the business cards themselves - anthropomorphism is a great way to ensure that anyone thinking about throwing the card into the bin will think twice, and that could be vitally important for me. It's also important to consider the potential printing limitations I might run up against; so having each cardback consist of a simple but recognisable design would work well in this case, especially considering I can't use silhouette logic to imply their characters. Thankfully, there's a few sources I can take influence from.

• Emoticons are usually a great way to display faces in a highly minimal, but somewhat "cute" fashion. Each card having a slightly different facial expression can help imply different emotions they're experiencing, but also gives the design a more timeless quality compared to some kind of realistic print that looks like a real head squashed onto a 2D plane.
• Likewise, characters' outfits and general look consisting of solid blocks of colour should help to keep their design elegant and not too busy. This kind of stripped-back design is a great feature of modern Bomberman character designs, though I'd also point to other franchises like Super Mario for having characters that can be encapsulated in just a few colours and shapes.

A template / style-guide. Note the manic colours; each one indicates a particular area, while black isn't visible from the front.

I'm not exactly certain how many characters I'll be able to afford to print, but I'll set out with a ballpark figure of three in order to gain sufficient variety. Character theming can come from all kinds of places; I eventually settled on something of an ensemble cast unified by shared design elements (simplistic, emoticon-inspired eyes, namely), but featuring distinct elements from one another that can further imply their character - akin to how fighting games like Street Fighter imply character details through their design (Ryu's battered gi, for instance, suggests his nature as a wandering warrior.) It could also be quite fun to have each character act as a parody of other characters featured in fighting-centric media, be that in the form of fighting games, tokusatsu shows, or action movies. That aside; I'd also like to include diverse elements for the sake of making things fun. Characters shouldn't have a "gendered" appearance, and I don't think limiting skin tones to realistic ones would be logical for something like this.

A test using Bomberman (just as an example!) Note how his distinctive blocks of colour keep him iconic and recognisable; simplistic eyes, a clear delineation between head and body, even a distinctive "character feature" in the form of his belt - a lot of fun things to include in such a small space.

My first idea was to have each character take influence from the four colours used in printing, namely cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. (The idea was that this would be a sort of self-reference to the fact that the characters are printed onto cards.) That said, I think just straight up making a "printed rangers" team would be a little dull without some kind of monster to make them unique, so characters should also each have a distinguishing element that makes them unique compared to any other.

Note for posterity; I actually considered going with pixel-based characters akin to those seen in #IDARB, but ended up deciding that might seem a little dated (pixel-art for this kind of thing had a renaissance back in the early-to-mid 2010s, but that's kind of died down since) and that simplistic character designs with vector-graphics would be a better showcase of my graphic design skillset.

Ultimately, the three characters I went with each had a distinctive design element (and inspirations from the games industry, which is a cool touch!) These ended up loosely maintaining that CYMK look, but this was only a loose style guide; the main focus was on a simplistic design. After spitballing some ideas, I came up with the following;

• Fighter. Features a martial arts gi, and is inspired by characters like Ryu from Street Fighter, Ryo Sakasaki from Art of Fighting, and Akira Yuki from Virtua Fighter. They're supposed to fit into the "wandering warrior" archetype that a lot of fighting games have, which feels kind of fitting...
• Worker. Features overalls, and is inspired loosely by the "everyman" idea present in something like Super Mario or Sokoban. I like the idea of them not really being up for this, hence the wide-eyed look.
• Hero. Features a belt-buckle and the implication of boots, being inspired loosely by hero-archetype characters from games like Dragon Quest or The Legend of Zelda. I think to offset the Fighter's more fighting-ready expression and the Worker's more shocked look, the Hero could probably look tired; perhaps from all the sidequests?

An early feature of the three! Note that the CMY look has been kept... out of order, but it's fine enough. I think their simplistic designs really help lend them some character, and I'm particularly pleased with how an element like Worker's overalls turned out. I'm thinking each business card should share a palette based on the character on the back?

A thought that occurs to me is that if each card is going to have a character, then a little blurb of some kind on the character's name, story, and maybe even likes/dislikes would be a great thing to put on the back QR code. That way, you can link to the game's rules, but also learn more about the character at the same time; helping that sense of anthropomorphisation and potentially being the tipping point that keeps these cards in someone's wallet and out of the bin. Come to think of it, Street Fighter 6 does a cool similar thing with its characters, each one getting their own little page and things like a statsheet for their likes, dislikes, height, and so forth - as well as a music track that suits them. (I'm not sure a music track would be tenable for this project, but a little stat table would be cute. Especially if every character has the same height listed as a bit of a joke.) Given it fits with genre conventions in a cute and unique way, I may as well go with it!

With that in mind, I'll need to collate some info for each character. Each one being 85mm tall would be a cute element, but basic likes and dislikes inspired by each character's inspirations would be fun; as an example, Fighter having a dislike for spiders would be a cool deep-cut reference to characters like Ryo Sakasaki, but Worker having a disdain for heavy boxes makes tons of sense given the nature of the Sokoban series.

There's another elephant in the room; rules. I can't exactly print them on the card, but that's okay; they can go onto this website somewhere, presumably linked with the QR code I'll include somewhere. (A dedicated Card Clash section would be smart.) Gogo's solves this by having your number of "failures" be directly tied to your number of active characters on the field of play, but that's not really doable with just one card. As such; I'm going to suggest that each card has a numerical health pool (let's say... 5 HP?), and this is drained should the opponent successfully flick their card into it. To add flair; the opponent deals one point of damage if the card bounces off the table at any point before hitting the card, but deals two points of damage if it manages to hit them in an airborne state (like a flying kick.) It might be fun to play around with additional ideas too - catching your opponent's card to regain a point of health could be a cool mechanic - but I'll need to playtest to determine if this is any fun.

A photo of the cards I ended up using for a test! They're almost exactly the right size for this kind of thing, so that's a really neat element. In this case, the "Joker" is at the front while the back of the card is at the back; note the singular "back foot" on the back side, used for an additional little bit of stability.

I had no idea how fun this would end up being - despite my memories of playing with Gogo's, it's been years since I owned any - but it's shockingly enjoyable just to flick the cards at each other! I did some quick playtests with people I had close to hand - including my two younger siblings, who seemed to love it. (Hey, they might not be the direct target market for this particular product, but if kids find something fun, adults are sure to as well.) After trying out a couple of rulesets, some reoccuring points were;

• People seemed to like the idea of going for "trickshots", like knocking down cards from an airborne state. Seems like the addition of a little flair went down well! Numbering values for "grounded" and "aerial" takedowns seemed to work just fine, and I don't think they need much in the way of tweaking.
• Health was fairly easy to keep track of, given it only used simple numerical values and simplistic plus/minus alterations. I'm glad that simplicity paid off...
• An interesting emergent point is that the kids claimed one of the cards was "better" than the other, and they might be right; a slight folding and cutting difference between the cards generally made the black Joker a lot less sturdy than the coloured Joker. Maybe that lends to an additional element of meta-strategy?
• Catching your opponent's card was something the kids found a lot of fun at first, but quickly devolved into a bit of an argument - it seems determining where the card has passed your opponent's card was difficult for them. That aside, adult playtesters seemed to enjoy it too, so I think that's an element worth keeping; especially as it's an active comeback mechanic that doesn't rely on your enemy screwing up.

With all of that in mind, time to start work on the actual webpage element. I'll put a link to it here. Note that this isn't an official launch; I'll make a post for that once cards actually get printed. Bearing in mind I've essentially got to print three sets of cards rather than just the one, it's a little more expensive, but it'll leave an impression. That said; I also need to create the design used for the back of the cards, featuring things like my name, role, contact information, a QR code - all that jazz. That'll be fun to work out!

First post!

Posted at around 4pm, 13/05/2025.

This is more of a test than anything. I'm writing it mostly to try and feel around how to make this work; I'm still quite new to HTML, given the last time I touched it was while messing around with stuff in Notepad back in high school. But, to anyone reading this; hello from the past! (Hopefully the website's not broken, overly messy, or otherwise iffy.)

Here's some things I'd like to add from this point onward;

• Ideally, a completed home page. As of writing, it's still a bit messy, and I need to fix some things up to make it ship-shape!
• Something of a portfolio for the work I've completed thus far. That's likely to go onto my portfolio page, though I'll probably link it to Itch.
• A couple of blog posts on my other work. I've got some concepts lying around that I've not done anything with, so showing them off would be nice.

And some things I actually have added;

• An error page! It's nothing special, but it does work. Here's a link!
• A couple of neat graphic elements, including a mostly unified colour palette. That's something I do still need to fix, though.

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I may as well properly introduce the site's name, by the way. "Ludohive" is a portmanteau of "ludo", as in "referring to games", and "hive", as in a beehive. That latter point might seem odd at a glance, but given my name's Bee and I live in Manchester, I think it makes some sense! My thought process is that "ludohive" is a place of play and work combined, so it feels kind of fitting. (Maybe none of this makes much sense to an outside observer, but it's the kind of thing I like to give some level of thought to.)

One more thing! This website's layout was designed by Eggramen, a really talented designer of these kinds of things. I probably wouldn't have been able to make this without editing and messing around with their template, so massive kudos goes to them for that. (It's really nice that Neocities has a community of sorts around the idea of sharing stuff like this! One of the main reasons I didn't want to just throw together a Wix site or the like.) I'll add some kind of credit button at the bottom for Ramen's stuff, but if you're looking to make your own site like this, I'd totally check out the Neocities' dedicated webmastering page for a ton of other cool layouts by cool developers. (Ramen's is a highlight because apparently it works with mobile.)