Designer's Diary part I

 

I don't remember when exactly but somewhere around 2007 I left everything behind and entered a wonderful world of boardgames. Since then I actually play all the time. Hundreds of new titles every yea. Different games, different mechanics: euro, ameri, wargames, logical games. 

 

 

 

The next step came pretty early. Designing my own game – a copy of something that I've already played but done in my way. Dozens of prototypes come to life this way but all of them end up in a drawer. I wasn't satisfied with any. Even if I showed it to someone, it was still far from my expectations. I had to change something. Invent something new, something fresh, something I'd have enough motivation to develop. 

 

 

 

And this is when I came up with an idea of worker placement game with an unique line of sight mechanics. Ok, I had an interesting idea, but what next. I written down on a piece of paper few standard actions like „exchange one stone for two wood” and tried it out. It worked but all other tests looked the same. A meeple besides his action could „see” also other actions but they were always the same. 

 

 

 

A milestone was using action cards that could be placed in different order each game. I started to like it. But what could a meeple see, how far? It could see its own action and actions on cards next to it. Something was missing. And then I came with an idea of two different actions on each card: main and side action. A meeple placed on a card could take an action it was placed on and all side actions in its line of sight. And what actions were within line of sight? All action on the left and right but only on cards with no meeple on them. It worked really well and I haven't seen anything like that before... to be continued