Card Cooperation
My family and I enjoy a good cooperative board game but there are so few. We began frequently playtesting an idea that was mostly cards with only pawns representing players. The idea was that cards would be face down in a grid and explored. When discovered, those same cards could be taken into the players hand to use. After many exciting play-throughs we decided to work towards a finished product.
Refined
One goal was to let the cards feel like part of the map and environment while still limiting the need to pause and wait for someone to read rules. Unfortunately, the pit card's imagery was especially cluttered with rules, as seen above.
I generalized the rule about "progress circles" and placed them on a card that each player can reference, if needed. The Pit card was improved, but I was also able add depth to the rule and add more meaningful decisions to other cards in the game.
Exploring is part of the fun in this game...