Space Lion Development Diary
The story of Space Lion begin in 2019 at a design retreat hosted by John Brieger and I came up with one called 3 bases. It's a light lane dueler that uses a poker deck.
Art Style Choices
What really drove me to make Space Lion was pairing it with the correct art style. I loved the colored pencil look of the promotional art from Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 and I wanted to make a game that looked like that! I combined that with my love for Sci fi and eventually found that 3 Bases would be a great fit for a scifi theme.
The art style of MvC2 next to Space Lion: Divide and Conquer
Deep Lockdown Development
Most of Space Lion's development happened in deep Pandemic lockdown. I was in a house hold with 2 of my best friends and we played it regularly. We also played it on TTS with a friends. It was positively received and I became very excited!
Playthrough of Space Lion at Game Kastle before game art.
Making a Game Out of Love
I played a Gamefound in 2021 for the game it did not fund. It funded later on Kickstarter. In reflection, I am glad it did not fund the first time. It forced me to ask myself how I could make this game better and if it belongs in this world. I truly believe Space Lion is now great because of the extra time.
Character Design by the Family
The character design in Space Lion is very personal to me. It was done by my sister Jessica Solis who has always loved creating unique and interesting characters. I'm very happy with the character's in the game and I think everyone will find a character they look forward to playing as.
Early sketches from Jessica on the right. Final character on the left.
The Art Team of Space Lion is incredible
Space Lion was drawn by 2 artists. The first artist is Andres Blanco who is now the art lead for Team Fight Tactics. Thank you so much for helping Space Lion out in the early phases! The second artist is Alex Ockyno from Cat and Sashimi who is incredible at matching styles. I hope to see his artwork in many board games to come. I'm truly honored to have their arwork in the game.
Why is it called Space Lion?
Space Lion is influenced by colorful Scifi like Trigun, Starcraft, Guardians of the Galaxy and Cowboy Bebop. Space Lion is a famous song from the Bebop soundtrack and I love that song. So I named it after that! Later, I added the Lion motif through out the game to bring it all together.
Space Lion is a sum of things the Solis family loves. We hope you will love it too!
A playthrough of the Beta version of Space Lion. It has changed quite a lot!
