Muster: Raise the Banners

The whole team that worked on Muster is over the moon with the photo shoot - and that includes professional illustrators and award-winning graphic designers!

Muster: Raise the Banners is a two player set collection, area control, duelling game (I'm not very good are fitting games in neat boxes describing what they are) where the aim is to have the highest score on the most number of castles at the end of the game.

It's an absolutely lovely, colourful, eye-pleasing game that when I came across it in it's lead up to a Gamefound campaign, I was really excited give it a try and shoot some gameplay photos for the campaign.

Shooting For a Campaign

There are a number of ways you can approach a shoot for a Gamefound type campaign, and this often gives you a lot of scope for creativity and style while pulling the images together.

Muster thrives on it's presentation, style and - most of all - how it uses colour throughout the game. While each castle and "suite" lines up to a specific colour (purple, red, yellow, green and blue) you also have wild cards in there (Rainbow Wizards and Rainbow Castles) which allow you to place cards of multiple colours or skip a sequence.

This creates a game that not only plays well, but looks fantastic on the table and pretty much cries out to be the focus of any shoot.

But you do need to be careful as not all colours are created equally. Red tends to dominate and can often over-saturate a scene, so it's no coincidence that the Rainbow Castle was placed over the red castle in all the gameplay shots.

Making It Feel Real

Once of the things you want a potential backer to feel is that what they are reading about, and what they are eventually going to give their money to, is real.

Over the years crowd funding has lost a bit of it's shine - even though backers understand it's an investment, and not a purchase, it can still sting if what you backed isn't fulfilled. So with that in mind it's important that potential backers can see and feel the game being played, which is much more powerful that digital renders.

Showing the game being interacted with - getting those hand shots - is a really simple way to show backers there is something tangible here, and that there is a real product at the end of it.

Chop Sticks A Plenty

I enjoy creating more abstract images as part of a shoot - even though I tend to focus more on gameplay and component imagery - and with Muster I really wanted to have a focus on the main cards because, again, the artwork and colour just demanded to be front and centre.

You really managed to capture the magic of the game, with a focus on bringing out the vibrant colours and focusing on the character-led artwork.

Most of the time, I don't know how I'd actually do this kind of work without copious amounts of free Wagamama and Yo Sushi! chop sticks!

I also don't know what I'm going to do when WH Smith's ceases to be a presence on the UK high street!

Muster: Raise the Banners is available on Gamefound now, check it out!