Meet Hyperelixir - When Fantasy, Illustration, and Board Games Collide

Turning a surprising first Kickstarter success into a full-time venture, we speak to Singaporean illustrator, game designer and creator of Hyperelixir, David Goh, to discover more about his new game, Herbcraft, and how his passion for game design and illustration fuels the creative direction of his games.

Q1: Please give the readers a short introduction about yourself and your company. What is your “origin” story, and how did you come about creating games?

Hey, I’m David, and I run Hyperlixir, a tabletop game dev and publisher from Singapore, and we’re all about making art-driven and theme-focused games. Our projects are unique in that they’re 100% audience-empowered via crowdfunding, meaning that every one of our games so far has first started out as Kickstarter campaigns before being published. This has allowed frequent communication & feedback from our fans, fellow tabletop gamers, and other Kickstarter creators, which has not only helped us tremendously with our creative growth but also with understanding what players want from their games.

Since I was a teen, I had been making fan-games (both digital and tabletop), creating art and other content of IPs I love. However, Hyperlixir really only started in full after the surprise success of our first Kickstarter for Endogenesis. We’ve continued publishing through Kickstarter since, and after four campaigns, we’re about to release our 3^rd and 4^th titles, which are Mercurial: Alchemia and Herbcraft.

Q2: What inspired you to pursue designing board games as a career?

I knew very early on in my life that if I got the chance to make games as a living, I’d jump in head-first. The surprise success of our first Kickstarter Endogenesis was what gave that opening, as we were expecting 5-10k in pledges but ended up raising 200k+. It suddenly looked quite possible to approach game dev as a full-time career. Since then, I took the plunge, and well, I’m fortunate to be able to say that I have had no regrets since.

Q3: Please give a brief introduction about Herbcraft. (Its premise, featured mechanics, etc.)

Herbcraft is a 25-minute card game of push-your-luck, deck-building, and pick-and-pass. It’s a lightweight spin-off to Mercurial: Alchemia, where players are floramancers, cultivating magical herbs while avoiding Blightweeds. It supports 2-4 players, or up to 8 players with two copies of the game.

Gameplay-wise, I'd describe Herbcraft as the comfort food of tabletop gaming. It features familiar, satisfying mechanics like push-your-luck and streamlined deck-building that many gamers love, while not being taxing or demanding. Most of the play is simultaneous as well, so it’s continually engaging with little downtime. It’s designed to be accessible for casual gamers while giving hobby gamers a reliable, low-commitment filler between heavier games.

Q4: Your other games have themes of magic and spellcrafting. What was the inspiration for Herbcraft, and did any of your previous games help with ideation for this game?

Like Mercurial and Mercurial: Alchemia (or just Alchemia), Herbcraft is also set in the same world as those games, within the fictional land of Valanyr. Between those two games, Herbcraft is more closely linked to Alchemia, since it’s designed as a spin-off.

Alchemia is about the greater setting of a fantastical bazaar; there are alchemists, magical creatures, trading for exotic flora in the markets, and potion-crafting… whereas Herbcraft is focused purely on the exotic flora part. Each card features a fictional plant specimen. You can think of it as a botanical field journal in card game form: each illustration comes complete with specimen name, genus, origin of discovery, and observations about its properties.

Q5: All your games also feature beautifully detailed artwork and designs. As an illustrator, what do you typically look out for in board games, and what are your inspirations for the style of art you use in your own artworks?

For board game art, I typically look for illustrations that capture my attention for more than a few seconds. Something that pulls me in, making it so that I need to look closer. A lot of times, I find that what triggers that fascination is a sense of obsession. For example, if a game was about marine life, you can really tell if the artist is incredibly passionate about marine animals – like if they love drawing whales all the time and even dream of them regularly – versus someone who’s competent but is just painting those animals because it’s required by the brief. The difference is stark, and it’s one of the best things about experiencing art: when the artist’s passion transcends ink and paper and briefly connects with the viewer’s mind.

As an illustrator, I’ve had to adopt a more generalist approach to art styles, as my role in Hyperlixir is more about filling gaps. One of our focuses as a publisher is highlighting local talent, which is why most of our games’ illustrations are made by Singaporean artists. For Alchemia especially, I’m proud to say that the art team is fully Singaporean, and it’s really their art styles that carry the game’s aesthetic, especially the work of our lead artist Jim Tan. When I do make art for our games, it’s really to complement the work of our artists and to ensure that everything meshes well with one another.

Q6: What challenges did you face when making Herbcraft, and what insights did you discover along the way?

The most challenging yet interesting part about making Herbcraft was the limitations I’ve had to impose on its development, as it made for a creative process I wasn’t used to. Starting out, I knew that I wanted Herbcraft to be a lightweight, cards-only game, one that’s both accessible in gameplay weight and price. This was different from the usual considerations with making a game for the Kickstarter audience, where incentives are often aligned in a way where “going bigger” in component count and scope is not just allowed but even encouraged.

For example, if you were designing a medium-heavy euro, like what Alchemia is, it’s trivial to add new mechanics that would require new components by way of new tokens, etc. Cost-wise there’s little pressure against doing so. You really need to be disciplined to ensure you’re keeping your design streamlined and not adding unnecessary bloat just because you can.

But if you’re designing a cards-only game where you’re limited to 100 or so cards, there’s incredible pressure to not do anything unnecessary. In fact, you’re challenged to find creative solutions to achieving your goals, and sometimes those solutions can fold into the game design in interesting and exciting ways.

The main insight I had from designing Herbcraft was that it was so, so incredibly fun to be working within these constraints. I felt like I had to think in pathways I’ve not had to in a while, which made the whole process rewarding in ways I hadn’t expected. It’s been a refreshing change of pace, and I’m excited to continue making lightweight games and confronting that challenge again.

Q7: What’s a piece of feedback from a playtester that was hard to hear but ultimately made the game better?

I feel like the hardest feedback hasn’t been what’s said outright but left unsaid. Sometimes you can tell from the aura of the table that your testers–despite them being your target audience–simply didn’t enjoy your prototype at all.

Since most testers are naturally kind, they won’t tell you outright that your game as a whole isn’t working, and they’ll instead focus on smaller issues they think can be improved. That’s where learning to read between the lines is important, because recognizing when a design needs fundamental changes (or even needs to be set aside entirely) is necessary if one is to continue designing games professionally. Not every idea can work, and being willing to abandon weaker designs lets you focus on designs that have potential, ultimately making them better games.

Q8: How did you start to promote Hyperlixir and your games? What were some challenges with growing an online audience?

Initially, we did what many other indie publishers on Kickstarter would do, which involved sending games to content creators worldwide commissioning preview videos, articles, and other things. I’m also very active on BoardGameGeek and hobby groups on Facebook, often sharing insights about our game design journey by way of photos, design journals, and other content types.

We still do all of that nowadays, but we’ve since amped up the ways our audience can get involved. For example, with Alchemia we ran multiple playtesting programs, where people can try the game on Tabletop Simulator, give feedback through playtest forms, and get free copies of our previous games as thanks. It’s been a tremendous success, and besides achieving more exposure for our games, we’ve made some genuinely great connections with members of the tabletop community, and I foresee doing more of this for years to come.

The main challenge with growing an online audience is how you’re sort of at the mercy of whatever social media platform you’re using. For example, many years ago, it used to be that collecting likes on your Facebook page was a decent way of building a following. It wasn’t always reliable, but you could often tap into that audience with your posts appearing on their feed. Nowadays you’re pretty much required to pay to boost posts to reach that same audience, which is a bummer given that you’ve spent so much effort growing them in the past. The shifts and changes in online marketing can be quite fast and drastic, which makes it a struggle to keep up with, especially for indie publishers like us.

Q9: Being a solo game developer, how long does it usually take you to produce a game? When do you think an idea you have is worth producing? What is the process like?

It really depends on the scope of the game! And typically, while I do handle the game dev and publication side by myself, production is very much a team effort with the contribution of other creatives. For example, a medium-heavy euro like Alchemia had been in the works since 2020 and is only starting to ship next month. Of those six years, which involved the work of seven other creatives, I estimate that my personal time investment was about two years of full-time work. On the other hand, a lightweight game like Herbcraft took just a few months, and it was accelerated by the fact that a lot of its art was already made.

Broadly speaking, when I do have an idea worth producing, it stays in the pre-production stage for quite a while as I continue testing and developing it, alongside other ideas. In the past that could be 1-2 years, but in recent times it’s become a bit faster as we’ve become more efficient.

At some point, the design either reaches a stage where it’s ready for full production or is sidelined because it’s not getting anywhere. If it’s ready for full production, I’ll then construct a plan and budget from production to publication, mapping out all the milestones along the way. Where the production starts to feel “real” is when we put out a call for artists. That’s when the clock starts ticking, and as I look through the artists’ portfolios, the game starts taking shape in my mind’s eye as we slowly settle on the art direction.

Q10: Do you have any advice for aspiring creatives/board game designers who want to pursue entrepreneurship and game design?

If you want to make your own games AND publish them, it’s important that you find a reasonable portion of the publishing journey enjoyable, because those are two very different skill sets. In the earlier years of Hyperlixir, I’ve had to devote much of my time dealing with the demands of publishing, and game design took up maybe 20-25% of my actual time spent, so that’s something to be prepared for. It’s only in recent years that that ratio has gotten better, as I’ve become more comfortable and practiced with the publishing side of things.

Another thing is that it’s really beneficial to have experience in an adjacent industry before going into self-publishing. For example, digital marketing, project management, or handling logistics/freight… those skills are very transferrable, and if you know you already enjoy doing those things, that’s a green flag that you’ll do well in this industry!

Q11: After Herbcraft, are there any future games in production that we could know about?

Yes! We just started production on a new game, and we’re seeking a Singaporean illustrator to shape its visuals from concept art to cover art. You can find out more in our call-for-artist post here: https://www.instagram.com/p/DaxKBwNmXgb

Q12: Where can we find out more about your company and games?

You can find us at www.hyperlixir.com, or our Instagram page or join our Facebook group!