by Jota on Tue Jun 20, 2006 2:10 pm
Ignoring the junior high school chorus...
My first thought is that it really ought to have more countries. Even 30-36 is a pretty small map (although not unreasonable, if your concept is one that requires it), but I think 27 might be just too few. Specifically, I'd recommend adding a whole sixth continent (probably in addition to expanding one or more of the existing ones).
Second, the strings or whatever the connecting lines are could look a lot more interesting. Maybe ribbons would be nice. If nothing else, you shouldn't have some of them sticking across the edges of the bubbles and some not: that just looks sloppy.
Third, country names. I don't really see any reason that the concept would require such non-descript names. They might be fully justified in Snakes and Ladders, but I don't see any value in doing it here. Are the smaller bubbles supposed to be "people" as well? If so, I would take Evil Pope's suggestion and give them all people-style names. Maybe each color group should be a family, so that the continents would be their surnames ("Bebbly", "Bobblin", "Babbles", or whatever), and the countries would have first names as well ("Judy Bebbly", "Jim Bebbly", "Patty Bobblin", and so forth).
Fourth, I think the continent bonuses need some revision as well, but I'll wait to see where things go with the other aspects of the map before looking too deeply into that.
Fifth, it might be worth looking into some kind of gimmick that would set the map apart from other maps. I personally feel the distinctive visual style is enough to get my interest, but that's apparently not the case for everyone. Don't try to force a gimmick into it if it doesn't fit, but if something occurs to you that you'd like to try out, give it a shot. It might make the gameplay interesting enough to attract some players who otherwise wouldn't bother trying it.
[Edit] Sixth, what image software are you using? I strongly recommend making sure that the program you pick is one that you know will handle the job well before you get too far into it. You really don't want to be halfway through the project using MS Paint, only to realize that some minor little change you need to make will require you to redraw most of your map.
Last edited by
Jota on Tue Jun 20, 2006 2:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.