The last few days have seen a lot of behind-the-scenes work on Lines of Questioning’s art, in addition to the conversation in the comments to the previous post. (Special thanks to locksleyu for the feedback!) I don’t have new art to show yet, but things are happening on this front, and I hope to have a new set of tiles that are both attractive and more readable soon.

Part of the challenge with the tiles is that there’s a balancing test involved. Aesthetics and gameplay clarity are both important, but they don’t always pull in the same direction. When they don’t one has to decide how much weight each should be given. It’s never easy to do that, especially when dealing with non-quantitative factors like “how nice does this look” and “how easy is this to read at a glance.”

This is, unfortunately, an area where legal principles can’t offer much help. Balancing tests are common in the law, and they are just as much of a challenge there as here. Different judges will look at the same facts, apply the same balancing test, and come up with different conclusions–all of which are reasonable, defensible, and in some sense “right.”

Of course, sometimes it becomes clear that the balancing test was applied wrongly, and that’s happened here. (See the comments to the previous post for more details.) Time to file the appeal . . . .