Illustrating the H.H. Holmes Murder Castle Board Game

In December 2018 I was contacted by Blueprint Gaming Concepts about developing a board game with artwork inspired by my H.H. Holmes Murder Castle illustration. I’d never worked on a board game, nor had much experience with tabletop gaming. It was quite an undertaking, but Seth & Brandt—the wonderful fellas at Blueprint—were well prepared & extremely passionate about the project, so I took it on.

I gotta say, the project management on this game was absolutely fantastic. With hundreds of elements and tons of revisions over the course of the project, there’s no way it could have been done had Seth & Brandt not been so thoroughly organized and precise. After a year of hard work, the game is now live on Kickstarter! This post is just about the artwork for the game but you can read all about the gameplay and order a copy by visiting the Kickstarter Campaign page. Between now and final production, we will continue to fine tune the elements and add new components to make the best game possible. I’m proud of the work we’ve done so far and beyond impressed with the game Seth & Brandt have designed. High five, guys!

One of the first elements we tackled was the cast of characters. The guys provided a short bio and description of each and here is the result. They all have unique backgrounds and ability icons, and their personalities inform their special abilities in the game.

Along with this I made the logo and box cover illustration. Developing these primary elements helped define the style, palette, and flavor of the game’s aesthetic.

Next we jumped into the most extensive element of the game: the room tiles! The game contains 26 rooms, most of which were real rooms found within the actual hotel. It was so much fun going through the list and dreaming up the environment of each space.

The most intimidating aspect of the project was the sheer amount of different tiles, tokens, and cards. This is where Seth & Brandt’s supreme project management saved the day! There were many adjustments to all elements as they playtested and tweaked the game, so staying on top of the many versions of each file required some intense file management. Beyond that, each file had to be generated in various formats and sizes, with and without bleed, and each prototype manufacturer required the files be prepared in different ways. Needless to say, I learned more about file management on this project than anything else.

My favorite element of the game is this set of cool dual-layered evidence boards players use to track their progress and display the cards and tiles they’ve collected.

And finally, we’d be lost without the trusty rulebook! Here are a few spreads from the first draft. I’m presently working on the final draft which reflects new changes and game elements. In the meantime, you can download the current rulebook on the Kickstarter Campaign page.

Thanks so much for checking out the work! If you like it and want to help support the project, please share this post wherever you hang out on the Internet, and back the Kickstarter Campaign to buy a copy of the game. If you have any questions or feedback, leave it in the comments. Thanks for your support!