The Art of the Game – Tarawa: 1943
Tarawa: 1943 began as most battle-related games do with intense research. It led us to a black and white map of Betio Island in the Tarawa Atoll drawn by Marines in a standard after-action report. Unlike most battles, the Tarawa invasion also had an accomplished artist who stormed the island by day and documented what he saw at night in foxholes. Kerr Eby was not a soldier, but there with charcoal in hand, he stood shoulder to shoulder with men more than half his age, fighting for their lives as bullets flew by (1). We used the art he created in the Kickstarter project to drive home the feeling of chaos and destruction the Marines encountered as they fought to victory.
As for the game's board aesthetic, the goal was to transport the player back to the ship's deck as commanding officers briefed the men on the impending invasion part of Operation Galvanic (2). Betio Island's landing was not a battle for glory; it was wave after wave Marines struggling with nature and the foe that would never back down. I tried to capture the stark, functional style of government forms in the battle archive. The playing cards mixed that "just the facts" design motivation and the spectacle of US military newsreels of the era.
Colors and fonts are a major driving force of a design package; some games seem to sit in a design limbo until we settle on the core color family and the essential fonts. Tarawa: 1943 stood on the shoulders of many great games, movies, and TV series for design influences. In our game Devil Dogs: Belleau Wood 1918, we took the colors and fonts directly from the USMC brand guide as the game focused on creating the modern USMC. Like the Band of Brothers game series, we were inspired mainly by the US war propaganda poster art in other games we made. Tarawa was an intensive 76 hours of constant firefighting and naval barrages the Marines dealt out to the prepared and dug-in Japanese marine detachment. With that, we opted for a more muted, flat, and dire play experience.
An industry-standard often sets our units' colors. The customer expects the Confederates of the American Civil War or WWII German Army to be a gray tone. Other times, contrast and gameplay override some color standards. In Tarawa, many factors drove the units' color choice to be an Olive Drab for the US Marines and a Gold for the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy troops present in the battle. The "expected colors" of a US v. Japan game would fall to Blue and red, respectively. With the Marines being the focus of this game, red for the Japanese would have been confusing, as red is also the US Marines' traditional color. Going with the landing force's olive drab became the US block's primary color, and then each battalion was given an accent color that represents the Marine Corps uniform and flag. Picking a khaki or grey for the Japanese blocks did not create an exciting visual for the gameplay. We ultimately selected gold for the Japanese units as a nod to the gold anchor painted on the Japanese Special Naval Landing Forces helmets (3). This gold anchor differentiated these specialized troops among the general rank-and-file Japanese soldier, so using it in the game allows us to alert the Marine player they are up against a well-trained enemy.
It is a fine line between history, function, and playability. These factors all must coincide and live in relative harmony to create the game's overall motif that players can enjoy.
(3) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Naval_Landing_Forces#Headgear