If anyone has any idea how to enlarge a specific part of an image on 200 images I'd love to hear it. Doing it manually sounds terrible and it seems like it could be automated.
Printed and cut first prototypes. Double sided matte photo paper 220gsm, laminated on one side (80micron). Next to a normal pokemon card for comparison.
Pic 2 shows 3 stacks of 18 cards each, left is pokemon, middle and right are printed and cut by me. Middle is glossy photo paper 260gsm, not laminated.
Pros: they feel pretty good to handle, they slide nicely, making them easy to shuffle or deal out, they look good as cards, card backs also look really good
Cons: a bit too thin/soft, so they don't feel THAT great, all of them are curved due to laminating, making them less appealing than if they were flat, all text is a bit too small. It's still readable, but uncomfortable, and some might have problems with reading it. It should be a lot bigger for comfortable play. Considering the simplicity of the "card design" monster names also should be bigger.
Unlaminated glossy paper doesn't slide as well, but it lays flat, and looks good. Though only the front gives the best colors, the back looks pretty basic. Semi gloss lays flat, looks the best (just like real tcg cards (mtg, pokemon etc)), but all the semigloss papers that I have are only printable on one side and are pretty expensive. I could just put an A4 sticker on the back, but aligning it would be a pain. Maybe first I'd stick it then print the back of the cards?...
Either way if I'm gonna do the whole 200 monsters properly I definitely won't use matte paper with lamination. Maybe I'll just go with the basic glossy paper.
As for the game itself, from what I tried by myself (with only 18 cards) it seems like it'd be great. I went with the mahjong style game, you pick a card and discard one each turn trying to complete a set of cards. E.g. in the beginning you draw 8 cards, and get 4 beastman type monsters and 2 fiend monsters. So you start discarding all other types, trying to collect more fiends or beastmen. If someone discards a fiend card you can take it and discard one of your own. Maybe you can only take a card if you have at least 3 other monsters of the same type or family and have to reveal those cards and put them somewhere on the table, therefore locking yourself to collecting that type.
I'm also wondering what hand size would be best. 8 seems like a bit much, it's not very comfortable to hold, but that number would work great with many types. For example you could collect 2 sets of 4 cards, and there's a few types that only have 4 monsters in them, so such a set would be a high risk high reward type of play (the harder the set is to collect, the more its worth).
I'm not sure what would constitute an end condition. Maybe someone declaring he gathered a whole set? Or maybe playing until cards in the middle run out? Maybe only some sets would end a session, and others wouldn't?
So there's a lot to iron out, but I really like what I got so far. Another cool aspect is that the game would be easy to expand, just put a monster illustration in the middle, assign it a type and family and voila. I'm already thinking about adding MonMusu and 12 beast girls to it. Tho maybe after remaking the broken taxonomy. Right now I think I'll print some more MGE cards and test play it with some people.