Cannon Fodder did not begin looking the way it does now. In fact the game wasn’t going to be about pirate ships at all. My original idea began with Pokémon. I thought it would be fun to create a game where the players play as Pokémon fighting each other to become the champion.Player would travel around a board collecting cards to learn new attacks to use in battle. I scrapped this idea pretty quick, as I did not want to infringe on Nintendo’s trademark. In the case that I might one day actually get my game published.
After about a week of having no progress I sat down in the corner of my class room with a notebook and my laptop. Thinking about my favorite board games and what I really love about them. I was heavily inspired by the combat in the game X-Wing, and was leaning toward creating some sort of 1v1 duel scenario. At some point the idea of pirate ships popped into my head and I went with it. I quickly printed out a 12×12 grid and created a deck of action cards out of some scraps of paper. The card system in Cannon Fodder was a slightly modified version of the battle system that was in my Pokémon prototype. I grabbed one of my classmates and immediately had him participate in my very first playtest. It turned out the game was half decent! It still had a long way to go but it was certainly a good starting point