M.A.G.D.A. or, Mapping And Galactic Dream Assistant, is a solo card game with a successful campaign premiering on Kickstarter. In the game, you are tasked with traveling the universe in a ship that is powered by your dreams. Your AI has become sentient, however, and wants to thwart you from completing any of your tasks. She will stop at nothing to keep you to yourself, even if it means total annihilation.
To infuse the game with personality, I wanted to integrate the Villain of the story (MAGDA) throughout the campaign. I wanted her to be listening in and then responding by attempting to tempt you, tease you, even flirt with you. The very first paragraph describing the game became a graphic to help make it look like MAGDA was rewriting copy by scratching things out. In the comments section, she even answered certain questions by backers in a cutesy way adding ridiculous asci emoji’s in her responses. Her voice in typography would splatter over perfectly fine graphics in blood red to defy the rules. I even had her respond and post media on Instagram as if she had hacked the system and had taken control over the gaming companies account! When I wrote the script for how to play the game (video) I decided to have MAGDA voice the instructions—sometimes she even gave bad advice just to make it interesting.
For the Limited Edition version of the games, I wrote a “mini-coffee table” book as lore for the game. It not only gives some back story into how the ship and characters evolve, but it also includes additional illustrations not used in the game. The size of the book was charmingly small but was hardbound with a gold foil cover.