Many artists have been inspired by Vancouver's Stanley Park, but it's unlikely many game makers have.
However, the park sparked something in Adam Jurgens when he considered creating his own card game. He created a game of his own after trying to get back into his old favourites like Magic: The Gathering and Yu-Gi-Oh and finding them too complex to reengage with.
"I would have never guessed in a million years I would make a game of any kind," he tells V.I.A.
On June 25, he launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund the next stage of his Heroes of Stanley Park game.
Starting on a spreadsheet
The Heroes of Stanley Park started in April of 2023 when nostalgia for his younger years prompted Jurgens to play his favourite old games.
"When I looked into playing those games again the magic wasn't there," he explains. "They'd gotten too complicated or there was no interest."
So he decided to make his own. On an Excel spreadsheet.
"I had this vision in my head of a game I wanted to develop," he says. "It took a few weekends to get the prototype right."
The first time he and his friends played it things went well; when they asked what it was called, Jurgens, a resident of the West End, came up with the Heroes of Stanley Park.
Stanley Park 'one of the most incredible outdoor places' game creator had seen
Originally from King City, Ontario, Jurgens went to the University of Waterloo to become an accountant before moving to Vancouver three years ago, in part because of the park.
"It does hold a special place in my heart," he says. "It's the reason I moved to Vancouver in the first place; when I saw Stanley Park it was one of the most incredible outdoor places I'd ever seen."
Now he lives nearby and visits the park nearly every day.
As the game developed, he imagined it taking place in the park, but in an alternate universe with magical creatures.
Through 2023 he and his friends kept playing, even taking prototypes to Stanley Park for games. Over time it kept evolving into the game he's working to release now.
A tactical game for casual players
Familiar with board and card games already on the market, Heroes of Stanley Park is aimed at people who are interested in card games but aren't looking for something as intense as Magic: The Gathering or similar games.
Instead of a duelling deck that one person builds and then uses against others, The Heroes of Stanley Park deck is more akin to classic card games, with a shared deck that is shuffled and dealt out to whoever is playing. That means it can be a one-versus-one or group game. Jurgens notes gameplay flexible with how people set it up.
"I am excited for people to mix things up and see how they enjoy the game," Jurgens says.
Heroes also includes dice, like Dungeons and Dragons, meaning there's an element of luck.
There are 44 monster cards and 36 spells in the shared deck; some are classics, like a necromancer, while others are unique, like the zork, which was inspired by the herons and seagulls in Stanley Park. He also connects the gnome doors around the park to the gnomes in the game.
AI art for now
With the name and initial structure of the game developed, Jurgens moved on to creating a physical version of the game. He designed cards using the AI app Midjourney, had decks printed in Kitsilano, and cut the cards by hand at a local Staples.
Creating the game himself with no publisher meant there was no real budget. He had about $2,000 earmarked for it, but when he researched human-created art for his 80 cards, he says quotes came back around $30,000 to have them made.
"Getting to this point with human art would have bankrupted me many times over," says the professional accountant.
Jurgens acknowledges there's uncertainty around the use of AI and has his concerns, but given the situation, it was the only way forward; it helped that he's comfortable with Photoshop and was able to touch up the graphics himself.
Depending on how things go in the future, human-created art is something he'd like to have done. One of the Kickstarter campaign's stretch goals is to avoid AI art if he raises $35,000.
"I feel more connected to human art, I think people in general are," he says.
Launching it into the wild
While he's been working on the game since last April and the Kickstarter campaign since January, Jurgens was nervous for the launch.
"I had no idea how it would do, I was quite nervous about it," Jurgens says. "I stayed up all night to launch it."
Jurgens recently surpassed his initial $7,000 fundraising goal, but that's not the end of his campaign; he's got more than a dozen stretch goals up to $225,000.
"I'm already thrilled seeing the positive comments people have left just in the first day," Jurgens says.
