Make up Your Makeup; Let’s continue collecting

Make up Your Makeup is more than just about becoming the best makeup artist. Growing and building your makeup collection is one of the most exciting things when you start out in makeup. You test products, you hate products, you find your holy grails and through the hauls and all the trials and errors, you fall in love with the process of makeup and building your collection. As you test new products, you build and collect your makeup collection and so the idea to gamify a process this simple, intrigued me into developing Make up Your Makeup.

The game’s world, is to be set in a makeup artist’s kit or the makeup artists collection. Its intention is to feel as though you are creating your makeup kit and picking up products (the cards) to build your kit. This is represented through the design of the gameboards.

The player gameboards are designed in sections and are categorised by the type of products and what they may be used for, e.g. cheeks have blush, bronzer and highlighter.

Make up Your Makeup, although initially ideated as a board game has now been converted to focus on being played as a card game. I wanted to make the game simplistic in its core game loops and mechanics, all the whilst keeping the true fundamentals of building your makeup collection.

Makeup collectors collect, trade or dispose of their products and so those mechanics needed to be implemented into the game. The game loop is as simple as playing with the 2 card decks (makeup & clientele cards). With each game round, the player will pick a makeup card, and decide if they will play their card in their gameboard, trade with other players or dispose of the card on the centre gameboard. Once the row has been completed, the player may collect their clientele card.

My 3-act structure is mentioned in my video from 1:15 – 1:53.

I feel that my game is best suited to be part of a family genre. Its aesthetics need to appeal to a younger audience but also have the appeal to those older, therefore I have placed a heavy emphasis on the game aesthetics and colour. The world of makeup is bright and colourful and this was important for me to show in the game through the game boards and the cards.

My game in the long run I hope would be picked up and sold at Mecca or Sephora (or even both) as they sell different brands. This real-life version of the game would have benefits for those who register to play and begin collecting and trading their products with one another, and with the end prize having the potential to work in partnership with one of these beauty brands. This could be online through their apps or focus on being an in-store hunt to locate particular items.

Upon researching makeup themed games, I discovered a Sephora themed monopoly game and a game named PrettyPro (Boardgamegeek, 2022). PrettyPro is a pen and paper game with the intention to move around the board game to collect the pieces it requires, to give other players their makeovers.Players must collect makeup to be able to complete a makeup look on their opponent.

I see my card game being most comparable to bingo in the sense of collecting and matching my cards up to the game boards players are using, which Bingo does through the matching up of numbers to be able to gain the 5 in a row. I would also compare my game to games such as PrettyPro. I believe my game is a blend of these 2 games’ mechanics and loops.

Make Up Your Makeup is an innovative card game because of the difference it holds against other makeup themed games. The majority of the makeup themed games out on the market are based on the idea of creating a makeup look with the products provided to another player’s face / your own or to a mannequin head. This is a mechanic that my game does not use but has the ability to show players what is needed for a simple makeup look.

As seen in my video, I had developed a prototype game that allowed me to test out my game rules and my how to play instructions (seen below).

Original Game Rules & How to play

This initial playtesting stage showed me what was missing. The game was too short. It needed an element of excitement or a way to make it harder for the winner to be determined. The first way to improve the game was through the introduction of points. Each card is worth a particular number of points making it a little more exciting through the element of chance and surprise when collecting your new card in each round. To be able to gain a clientele card, the products need to have been correctly allocated on the gameboard and also have the same number value on each of the cards in the row. This means trading and disposing of cards needs to be done wisely.

This new point system was playtested in class and I was provided with feedback (seen below) that assisted in my 3rd round of adjustments. My apologies for the messy handwriting.

New Game Rules & How to Play

With the feedback I received during the playtest in class, I made revisions to my gameboards, cards and tried to better explain the game in a manner that was clearer for players to understand.

Having made a 3rd round of revisions, I hope to get even more feedback on a way to improve my game because I have thoroughly enjoyed the process of creating Make up Your Makeup.

References

PrettyPro Game 2022, BoardGameGeek, viewed 9 May 2022, <https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/223758/prettypro-game&gt;.

Video References

History – The Playing Card Factory 2015, The Playing Card Factory, viewed 18 April 2022, <https://theplayingcardfactory.com/history&gt;.

Playing cards – National decks | Britannica 2022, Encyclopædia Britannica, viewed 18 April 2022, <https://www.britannica.com/topic/playing-card/National-decks>.