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Laszlo Molnar
Hungary
Budapest
Hungary
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(It's so fun to write Designer Diary in a blog post title that I could not resist, even though the game in question was designed in something like one hour...)
I’m not really deterministic but sometimes life seems to prove that there are no coincidences.
Before I went to Essen I pre-arranged some buys, like 4 games from Néstor Romeral Andrés. Then, in Essen I forgot that he was there only for one day and I just could not buy these games (as written in my Essen diary). So I had some spare money. Had I bought Néstor’s games in Essen, I would not have bought Spiel and would not have gotten Spiel Mini for free for buying the big brother. (I chose green, as I also wrote it here.)
And then I would not have designed my first game that will be published.
And it’s true even if it’s a very small, very simple, silly game for some-year-olds.
So I got Spiel Mini and as the game was published just like the very first edition of the original back in 1980 (with no published rules but a call for inventing new rules), I started toying with the 20 dice. The challenge was creating games using a system where there are no different colored game pieces: everyone has or can use the same dice that come in one color. (I chose green dice in Essen – I thought they fit nicely to the 3 basic colors of Spiel. And I love green.)
It took the longest time to design the first game. The second one came a lot easier. The third one was just born in an hour. And the fourth one… Why not, I thought.
The first game is a little brain-burner. I’m not sure if exhaustive playtesting would not prove it’s solved but for some games it surely works – and really needs lots of very basic calculation and combination for a game of 20 steps only. The challenge of common pieces is solved by making a distinction between the sides of the board, the faces of the pyramid being built: in the end of the game your score depends on your side.
The second one is a bit like the pair discovery game published in the rulebook of the big brother, Spiel. It has different rules and some further twists and uses a board as big as it can be – I turned the base platelet upside down for some more spaces. Pair discovery games usually use common pieces so this part wasn’t a challenge at all.
For the third one I thought dice rolling can be also fun; it’s a tactical game where you have to make decisions based on the die rolls. Of course it’s still a very luck-dependent game but I kind of liked the dynamics of it; I think this is the most fun game of the three. Here, once again, the sides make the distinction, so it’s another 2 to 3-player game.
By this time I was really toying with all the possibilities of the game pieces. I realized the base can stand on its side and tried to create a game where the dice try to climb up to the top but never found any really satisfying solutions for some problems. I have also designed a game with hidden motivations but never wrote the rules down.
But I was toying with all the game components even further… And I invented something really silly: a dexterity game which used the components creatively. I wouldn’t say this game is something the geek crowd should really care for… Also I don’t force getting a designer badge just for this silly thing… But I can’t deny I’m happy because Abacusspiele chose this concept and (with small changes, of course) it is going to be included in the next edition of the game.
Reading the rules that will be attached to the game it’s obvious the publisher tried to choose very simple and very creative concepts that are accessible for the widest possible crowd (The “rulebook” has “6+” written on it). One of the 2 other rules included is a solitaire game by original Spiel designer Reinhold Wittig and it even manages to do what I failed to do – create rules that work using the base standing on its side.
I must admit I feel honored to share the same rulebook with Mr. Wittig!
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Thank you! I think it's funny.
