The Forbidden Pit

This project was a bit outside my usual scope but I consider the results to be some of my best recent work.

An old friend named Steve who lives and works locally is a passionate gamer and game designer, particularly of card and board games. About 20 years ago Steve invented a clever little card game based on martial arts fighting that he dubbed The Forbidden Pit. Initially consisting of basic punches, kicks and blocks the game was an instant classic, even in it's basic hand drawn form. 

I was just getting into graphics at the time, dabbling on an ageing Amiga500 while working as a lab technician - but I liked his game a lot and offered to help him illustrate it. As often happens however, the dreaded RL got in the way and we lost touch for a bit... 

Olde Skool.

I ran into Steve again in 2008. In the interim he had continued to develop his games, and Pit had grown into a comprehensive combat system featuring variations of almost every martial arts technique known. An illustrator had, at some period in the 80's spent an apparently considerable amount of time drawing the moves and laying out cards, however many of the newer moves were improvised from old cards and the game was in a bit of a state.

In fact it had grown so complex, with so many improvised cards that it was nearly impossible to play without a referee who already knew the rules backwards. Therefore the full game was rarely played outside of semi-regular official tournaments. However the system behind it remained sound, and it was still great fun.

New cool.

Steve was always keen to take the game to a wider audience and had invested in some printed decks, however lack of resources and no illustrator on board meant the project had stalled. He asked if I was still keen to help out, and lacking any other commitments I agreed to re-vision The Forbidden Pit.

Over the next 6 months or so I re-designed and unified the visual aspects of the system and illustrated over 100 unique cardsCheck out the site at www.theforbiddenpit.com for more.

For context, in the 2011 deck, most cards follow a variation of this layout. Colour coding is a big factor in defining combo possibilities and speeding gameplay. Different moves are defined in gameplay by a few factors - damage dealt or blocked, combo options, valid counters and special rules like breaks, knock-downs and submissions. The fewer swatches on the sidebars, the harder a move is to block and counter - the more blood drops at top left, the more damage is dealt etc.

The new version of Pit has now gone gold and was officially launched at SupaNova Expo in Sydney. Complete Decks are available now, check it out on Facebook.

We'll probably continue to add to the game - the Bitch Slap move made the cut but the Death Touch was eventually rejected as being too fictional...fun game!