Seeing people having fun playing your games is incredibly rewarding! Or that the only non-video/mobile game their kids will play is Ultimate Werewolf, and they want to play it all the time. Or that Castles is the game that got their spouse into gaming. TA: Some of the best experiences I’ve had are when someone comes up to me at a trade show and tells me that Castles/Suburbia/One Night/Werewords/Silver/etc. As a designer, how does it feel to have created games that have clearly resonated with the board game community? Suburbia has seen a ‘Collectors Edition’ reissue and Castles is soon to receive the same. In Castles, building a kennel next to the meat locker is either very efficient to feed your dogs, or it’s super creepy because of where the meat might be coming from! DM: Suburbia and Castles of Mad King Ludwig are both much loved games.
I like that players can find fun situations through the various combinations in our games. These are *games* after all, so taking them too seriously doesn’t work for me. How do you think a light-hearted touch enhances the game experience for players? The Castles of Mad King Ludwig DM: There is a vein of humour running through many of your well-known designs, including some of your more strategic games. You don’t need a sense of humour to live here…but it helps. Even New York Slice has a large number of Today’s Specials to keep the game fresh. Think of all the extra buildings in Suburbia, rooms in Castles, or cards in Colony. That’s why the information in strategy games we publish is mostly open (except for end game secret goals), and why there are always a lot more tiles/cards/etc. We address the former by limiting the amount of time players can discuss roles, the second by making most of the rules specific to cards which are then explained by the app, and the latter by including more roles than you can possibly play with in a single game.įor strategy games, it’s about making meaningful decisions that make you feel like you are doing something better (or at least different) than your opponents, and having enough variability that each game will be different than the last. TA: For a party game, there has to be high interaction among the players, and a super short initial rules explanation, and a variety of things to do each game. What design elements contribute to a great party game vs those for a great strategy game and which is the more challenging to design well? There are two things that have made it successful: The variety of roles combined with easy-to-learn gameplay, and the integration of the app into the game, which provides it with a way to reach gamers who normally wouldn’t touch traditional boardgames.Īre you the Werewolf? (Photo: Bezier Games) DM: One Night Ultimate Werewolf and its related games are quite different experiences to the likes of Suburbia or Colony.
KING OF SUBURBIA GAME SERIES
TA: The One Night games have been a very successful series for us. Can you tell us the story behind your involvement with the game and your thoughts on what makes it so popular?
KING OF SUBURBIA GAME PLUS
Ultimate Werewolf has the distinction of selling more games each year than the previous year…for the past 14 years! DM: One Night Ultimate Werewolf has been a big success, spawning a host of other themes, a word game (Werewords) plus associated merchandise. Shortly after that I published the very first Ultimate Werewolf game (now known as the “whitebox” edition), making 800 copies by hand until I manufactured the first “real” edition: Ultimate Werewolf Ultimate Edition. Our very first game was Start Player (a card game to determine who goes first). At about that time, I started publishing Age of Steam expansions. One of my designs, Seismic, was picked up by Atlas Games. TA: I had been designing games for a long long time, but didn’t take it seriously until about 2005 or so. Please can you tell how you how your journey in the games industry began? DM: Thanks you for joining us today, Ted. Ted Alspach, the founder of Bezier Games and the designer of Suburbia, Castles of Mad King Ludwig, One Night Ultimate Werewolf and many more joins Diagonal Move to discuss game design and publishing.
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