• Matt Leacock

    Matt Leacock Games

    • Animal Rescue Team – Design Diary
      by Matt Leacock on October 15, 2025

      Lisa with an early prototype of Animal Rescue Team on May 7, 2019 OriginsThe idea for Animal Rescue Team began in a conversation with my family as we walked our family dog (1) around the block. I brought up the fact that the license for my game, Thunderbirds had run out and I had the opportunity to revisit that game’s design and possibly develop it into a new product.In Thunderbirds, players go on rescue missions and fly around the globe as members of International Rescue in an homage to the 1960s TV show of the same name. You have to gather the right rescuers, vehicles, and equipment in order to have the best chance of success. But you can’t spend too long preparing for any specific rescue since there are always more disasters looming on the horizon. The game requires you to make constant tradeoffs between risk and efficiency, has a lot of tension and storytelling elements, and did quite well when it came out in 2015.We discussed what players might rescue in a new game with a rescue theme and remembered the game Animal Rescue that my daughter had prototyped when she was in elementary school (2). What if the players were rescuing animals? While discussing it, we quickly realized that we knew a real-life animal rescuer – our friend, Lisa Towell! I contacted her shortly after our walk and was delighted to hear that she was up for helping to design the new game.Lisa and I started out by building out some tables for translating the game’s characters, rescues, vehicles, and setting over to the new theme. I looked at things through a mechanical lens (how might the game’s mechanisms change to fit the new theme?) while Lisa looked at the design from the other direction (how might the game’s new theme change the existing mechanisms?). During our early conversations it became apparent that we had two main goals. We wanted to center the game on animals and we wanted to improve on the previous game wherever we could.Goal 1: Center Animals in the GameOne of our early ideas was to embody the animals you were rescuing in the game, making them an important part of play. Perhaps in the new game, you could actually see the animals and load them into your vehicle when you completed a rescue. This not only fit the game’s story well but it leaned into one of the elements of Thunderbirds that people reported enjoying the most. In that game, you could load “pod vehicles” into Thunderbird 2, fly them around, and drop them off in order to complete rescues. In this new game, we could give players the option to load and unload animals and equipment into and out of every vehicle.We also wanted to be respectful of the animals shown in the game. We favored showing the animals in a naturalistic way (no exaggerated, Disney-like treatments to their eyes, faces, or proportions), give each of them their own names, and treat them – even the chickens and lab mice – as individuals worthy of being rescued. Lisa spent a lot of time directing the illustrators as well. She favored the depiction of animals of mixed breeds and wanted to make sure the little details were rendered appropriately. (Examples that I recall: “a goat’s tail points up!” and “OMG, you’d never hold a lead rope like that when handling a horse!”)Like all of my games, we spent some time early in development on working out the language used in the game. Here’s an excerpt from one of our controlled vocabularies: An excerpt from our long controlled vocabulary for the game One dilemma: while we wanted the players to emotionally connect with the animals in the game, we didn’t want them to despair if they failed at a rescue or at the game. We used some strategies to provide some emotional distance for more sensitive players:The cover of the game shows the animals in the act of being rescued – not in peril.The illustrations on the rescue cards show the animals, but they’re never shown in danger.While the short stories on each rescue card describe real-world rescue situations, that text doesn’t need to be read to play the game.If you lose the game due to a failed rescue, we assure you that another volunteer rescue team comes to help. (And we suggest you buy them lunch as a thank you.)We felt this approach maintained the game’s realism and tension while reducing the likelihood of upsetting players, especially young folks.Goal 2: Lean into the Fun, Clean up the JankyThis was also a great opportunity for me to revisit the underlying Thunderbirds design and tune it up. My goal was to lean into the elements that worked well while cutting out the bits that were confusing, awkward, or unnecessary. Over the course of development, we made the vehicles more fun, improved the way the cards worked, dropped one type of action, modified the dice, and made a few other miscellaneous improvements.Make the Vehicles Even More FunAnimal Rescue Team makes use of six different vehicles and we really explored how they could be different and playful. They have a toy-like quality and we worked to ensure each vehicle’s form helped communicate its function. A rabbit and a specialist on a motorcycle, on a truck(prototype made from 3D printed resin and laser cut illustration board) The speeds of each vehicle are printed directly on them, making it really clear how fast they can go.Each vehicle can carry specialists, animals, and equipment and those pieces each take on a different form. Specialists are represented by pawns, animals are represented by animal meeples, and equipment is represented by tokens. You always know what you’re allowed to carry. If it fits, it sits! We added a (non-drivable) trailer to fit large animals (horses, cows, and a tiger) (3). That led to the idea of towing vehicles. You can attach the trailer to the SUV or truck using a hitch that’s similar to the hook-up used in Brio trains.We added a boat to the game for water rescues. This, in turn, led us to change the board’s topology. Players can move the boat between regions, provided they share a coastline, or they can hitch up the boat (like the trailer) and drive it between land regions.We added a speedy motorcycle to the game which can be loaded onto the back of the truck, which essentially lets one specialist move two vehicles at the same time.All these additions resulted in a lot of playful variety without much additional complexity. You can look at a vehicle and see what it can carry, how fast it moves, and whether it can hitch or be hitched to another vehicle or not.Because the vehicles are also limited in what they can carry, their vehicles will start to fill up as they pick up animals. To solve this, they can drop animals off at shelters (where they’ll be cared for) in order to free up space in their vehicles. But the shelters also periodically fill up, leading to even more logistics problems.Make the Special Cards Work BetterThe game uses logistics cards which give players special one-time powers (these were called F.A.B. cards in Thunderbirds) and event cards which challenge the players with new circumstances or restrictions. Lisa brainstormed all sorts of different benefits and challenges that we could throw at the players and then we both set out to figure out how they might play out in the game.Then, I made the following changes to the two systems so they would function even better in the new game:I changed the event cards so players encounter an ever-increasing number of them at a time, escalating the danger as the game unfolds. In Thunderbirds, you only ever turn over one of these at a time which often led to dead beats when a card didn’t really do much. I also added events that change the topology of the board by closing bridges or roads.I addressed a problem I had with the F.A.B. cards in Thunderbirds. They always felt a bit random since they’re drawn blindly from the top of the deck. Now, in Animal Rescue Team, you can choose between two faceup cards (essentially drafting them) or you can draw blindly from the deck in times of desperation. This gives the players more agency – they can purchase a card knowing it’ll help them. These faceup cards also now cycle as time progresses which lets you see the majority of the deck each game, instead of a limited handful.To add more variety from game to game, we added more of each type to the game. There are now 18 event cards (up from 12) and 24 logistics cards (up from 18).Other TuneupsPeople who are familiar with Thunderbirds may be interested in the following other changes that we made between the two games:I dropped the somewhat awkward “Plan” action that let you exchange an action for a random F.A.B. card since it was rarely used in practice. There are now only two possible actions in Animal Rescue Team: Move or Rescue.I flattened the curve on the rescue dice. Thunderbirds uses dice that each show 0–5; Animal Rescue Team’s dice each show 0, 1, 2, 2, 3, 4 for a range of 0–8 instead of 0–12 when the two dice are summed together. It’s a subtle change but it means that each bonus matters more in proportion to the numbers that are randomly generated. (4)Some rescues now escalate in difficulty the longer you put them off. After a bunch of testing, I changed the rules so the eight Time Ticks Down cards are simply shuffled directly into the rescue deck during setup. Thunderbirds used a more complex setup (similar to Pandemic) where the deck had to first be split into smaller piles with these cards shuffled into each pile. This method eliminated the possibility that your game is derailed by a really bad shuffle. But those games are exceedingly rare and the special setup is complex and time consuming. This change also had the side benefit of raising the tension in the game since you can never know what you’re going to draw next.Development ProcessAs we developed the game we did many rounds of playtesting with families, animal lovers, hobby gamers, cooperative game lovers, and lots of folks from the animal rescue community. We lent copies to friends, tested at conventions, and did video-recorded remote tests. The game changed in several ways over the course of development.Animal EvolutionOf all the components in the game, the ones that saw the most iteration were the animals themselves. We started by representing the animals as simple wooden cubes, then punchboard tokens, then experimented with 3D sculpted miniatures, before finally deciding that wooden animal meeples were the best approach. The first vehicles, specialists, and animals that I put together to show Lisa. Look at the two chickens, a dog, and a horse! It’s also clear at this point that I had no idea what sorts of vehicles would be used to rescue animals. (Take note: people do not typically pack dogs into a container pulled by a semi truck.) The punchboard version of the animal tokens. When they were in the vehicles, they looked great. But they didn’t look so good when lying on the board. This photo also shows some color-coding on the vehicles that we later dropped. Stock wooden pawns as specialists with sculpted, plastic animals (hand-painted 3D resin prints) A prototype showing specialists, animal meeples, and shelters (all meant to be in wood) (5). We’re still developing the vehicles and equipment at this point. The equipment shown here is a simulation of screen-printed wood; we changed these to be punch board tokens in the final game since those felt better. The first animals were simple wooden cubes, glued together that we used for rapid testing.Punchboard tokens were the least expensive. We could fully illustrate these but they didn't have a very good table presence as you’d have to lay them down on their side before they were rescued.Plastic miniatures looked great but they introduced more plastic into the game and they would have been quite expensive, especially if each species was in a different color. It also would have increased the overall size of the vehicles, and therefore the board, and then possibly even the box, adding to the game’s cost.Wooden animal meeples however, could stand up, could be in different colors without much additional expense, and each would still have a distinct shape. They also looked better next to the wooden pawns we had planned to use for the rescue specialists.Specialist EvolutionThe specialists started out as pegs that were inserted into the vehicles but we then switched them to be wooden pawns which felt much better. The pegs always needed to be in a vehicle or shelter (otherwise, they’d awkwardly lie down and roll around on the board). Once we made them pawns, we realized they could simply stand on their own, outside of a vehicle or shelter. Uhh… hello? Can I get a ride? When we let them stand by themselves on the board, we realized that there were some situations where it made sense to leave one behind in a region, for example to make room for an animal in a vehicle. We soon learned that this can lead to unfortunate (and often, very funny) situations where you have all the best intentions of picking up your team member before their turn, but circumstances change – or you forget – and they’re left stranded, looking for a ride.Rescue Card EvolutionThe illustrations, structure, and design of the rescue cards evolved along with the rest of the game. These cards have a lot of information to convey and need to do so efficiently so they don’t slow down play. Each card needs to communicate the rescue’s difficulty, the bonuses you can apply, its location, the animals you’ll need to place on the board, the bonuses you’ll get if you’re successful, a title, the story behind the rescue, and an illustration of the animal being rescued. A selection of rescue cards as they evolved through various prototypes We determined early on that it wouldn’t make sense to illustrate each rescue situation on the rescue cards. We didn’t want to show animals in peril, and if we did, the animals would be quite small. Such illustrations would also require a tremendous amount of art direction and expense. So instead, we put a hero illustration of the animals to be rescued on each card. We also learned that illustrating each location helped give the regions an identity that helped players find them on the game board. Sample rescue cards showing final artwork. The one on the right shows our new method for showing scaling difficulty. Zev Shlasinger, who runs Play to Z, wondered if some of the rescues could get harder the longer you wait to complete them. The idea worked well. Should you complete the rescue with a tight deadline or should you do a different rescue (that’s less pressing) but will get harder the longer you wait? The hardest part for these was encoding them in a way that didn’t force the player to do a lot of arithmetic.World BuildingLisa also spent a good deal of time building out the world in which the rescues take place. She started with something we both knew – the San Francisco Bay Area – but then we decided to change the setting to an imaginary world in order to give us more freedom with the design and so the players could imagine this place being anywhere. The first board (modeled after the San Francisco Bay Area) and the board during development. One key change was the integration of water into the regions so the boat could function as a rescue vehicle. Another study of board topology. (If you ever need to get around in the Bay Area, print this out and take it with you.) Lisa described each region in detail. These descriptions helped her write the different rescue stories and were a useful reference for the illustrator (Jeff Langevin) when he drew the board, rescue card, and mission card backgrounds. Since the game has come out, we’ve already been asked by several people if the game is set in a real place. I take that to mean it feels pretty authentic to folks.Using her extensive experience in the field and from consultations with other experts, Lisa also supplied the majority of the details you see in the game. She wrote descriptions of the specialists, what they’d be wearing, the equipment they’d be using, the vehicles they’d be driving, as well as other notes on the logistics cards and event cards for the game. While the game isn’t a simulation, we wanted to take every opportunity we had to get things right. A closeup of 3D printed proofs of the vehicles, animals, on an inkjet proof of the board ResultsWe’ve been really happy with the results. Thanks to Zev Shlasinger of Play to Z, Tony Mastrangeli, and SU&SD for helping us really fine tune the product. Thanks also to the illustrators, Alyssa McCarthy, Jeff Langevin, Eric Hibbeler and the vehicle sculptor, Toan Nguyen. Special thanks to all the people in the animal rescue community who helped advise us on the game including Janice and Norm Rosene, for sharing their technical expertise; and Michelle Cehn, Lisa DeCarbo, Dan Miller, Rebecca Platt, and Claudia Sonder, for sharing their ideas. And thanks to our many playtesters.We started this way back in 2019, before the lockdown, and even managed to steer the game from one publisher to another over the course of development. We’d also like to thank the folks at Z-man Games who helped Play to Z secure some of the wonderful artwork in the game. (Thanks Mike and Bree!)How the Game Compares to Real Life (Lisa)Working on this project with Matt has been fantastically fun for me – what a great opportunity to share stories about animal rescue with more people! Animal disaster response can be exciting, exhausting, surprising, heartwarming, and heartbreaking – but it’s always rewarding. I was thrilled to try and capture the whole experience in a board game. I hope that the game inspires people to create a disaster plan for their own animal companions, or maybe consider volunteering with their local animal disaster response team.In our early discussions, we realized that we would have to take some creative license with real-life animal disaster response in order to suit the mechanics of the game, and to make the game more interesting and fun to play. Here are some of the ways real animal response compares to the game.It’s More Than Just Field OperationsReal animal disaster response requires volunteers in many different roles. Hotline operators take calls from members of the public who need help with their animals. Field team members are assigned to visit properties to locate, assess, and transport animals. Shelter team members care for animals in temporary shelters until they can be reunited with their humans or transferred for adoption into new homes. Additional volunteers handle planning, tracking, logistics, radio communications, public communications, and other supporting roles.We simplified things for the game by focusing just on the work of the field teams. In the real world, the field teams also do a lot of sheltering in place (in addition to evacuating the animals to shelters), but we decided that the addition of sheltering in place would be an unnecessary complication in the game.Volunteer Animal Responders Can’t Do Everything (Even Though We Want To) Lisa evacuating koi from a pond on a burned out property (photo courtesy of North Valley Animal Disaster Group) The game's specialists (Firefighter, Swiftwater Technician, Extraction Specialist, Rope Rescuer, Veterinarian, and Animal Behaviorist) are real roles, but a typical team doesn't usually have so many skilled specialists on it. In the real world, we generally rely on trained professionals for the advanced stuff. We might request a team of veterinarians if any animals need medical care, or we might partner with local animal control officers who are experienced in handling aggressive and difficult animals. Animal response volunteers bring a wide range of skills and experience to the table – everything from species experts to SAR (Search and Rescue) volunteers to people who have never handled a large animal. Luckily, there are roles for everyone, no matter what their background.We train year-round to continue expanding our skills, but most of us are unpaid volunteers, many with full-time jobs or other responsibilities, so we focus on learning the skills for just one or two roles. Training as an animal disaster responder has given me the opportunity to acquire all kinds of interesting skills, like ham radio operations, fireline safety, animal triage and first aid, and safe handling of many animal species like cats, dogs, rabbits, horses, sheep, goats, pigs, alpacas, chickens, turkeys, and even emus.A typical field team in a big incident might have just two people (since we often just don’t have enough people available to form larger teams). One is the trailer driver (trained in trailer safety and maneuvering), and the other handles the navigation, paperwork, and radio. Both people assess and handle the animals.Safety Comes FirstTo make the game more exciting, we have some rather dramatic scenarios. But in real life, we are very careful not to make things worse by putting human volunteers at risk. For example, we don’t send volunteers into areas at immediate risk of burning or flooding, or into a half-collapsed building. We use PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) like helmets, work gloves, etc., and we keep tabs on our field teams by radio at all times. Some of the equipment in the game (like the Fire Protective Gear) serves important safety functions. The box cover art posed some interesting challenges – we wanted to show a lot of action without making it look too scary or dangerous. Claudia Sonder, founder and president of Napa Community Animal Response Team, helped me to spec out the water rescue scene for the illustrator with the appropriate equipment and PPE. Note that all the rescuers are wearing helmets, and all the people on the river are wearing personal flotation devices. The original art had a couple of safety elements that you can’t see (we decided to zoom the scene in a little for the final version) – the rescuer in the water is attached by a rope to the boat, and there are crates that the animals are being loaded into – that’s much safer than letting the dogs and cats just run around loose. That tired horse in the background is getting a forward assist to climb up the hill via a rescue strap around his chest – much better for him than pulling on his head and neck.Different Types of Disasters Don’t All Happen at the Same TimeThe game is designed to give a glimpse of lots of different types of disasters – fires, floods, mudslides, earthquakes, tornadoes, collapsed buildings, hazardous material events, contagious animal diseases, and even human-caused disasters like neglect and abuse cases. Individual animals also might need the help of a technical rescue team when they fall into a hard-to-access space or get stuck somewhere and their humans can’t get them out. (Real animal technical rescue teams even have the rigging equipment needed to airlift a horse with a helicopter.)In the real world, you don’t get all of the disaster types at once like in the game. So, one incident might be a large wildfire with many homes burned, another might be flooding affecting livestock, and another might be a neglect case involving a bunch of small dogs. We would then choose volunteers for that incident who have the appropriate skills and equipment for the conditions (species-specific handling skills, animal first aid skills, trailer driving, technical rescue, etc.)However, quite often one disaster will lead to another – for example, earthquakes can cause fires, collapses, and hazardous materials spills – so real life teams get exposed to a wide variety of challenges. A sudden evacuation might result in the discovery by first responders of previously unknown neglected animals who need care. Surprises happen all the time – you go to a property to pick up a couple of cats, but you drive by an injured goat on the way and end up loading her into the back of the SUV because you don’t have a trailer. I was once en route to a property to feed some donkeys when we were stopped by a first responder to warn us about a bear with burned paws who had been seen limping around nearby. Never a dull moment! But all of that said, the game definitely puts a lot more disaster scenarios side by side than we typically see in real incidents.Sometimes There Are LOTS of AnimalsA large incident like a wildfire can impact thousands of animals. The board game simplifies this to just a few animals per rescue so that the mechanics of the game are reasonable, but in the real world we might get a call to evacuate 30 horses from a boarding facility, or to provide food, water, and medical care for a flock 60 chickens or a herd of 25 goats. In the game, we used the mission cards to bring in some examples of larger rescues.A lot of the challenge in a large animal response is in the paperwork – keeping track of who each animal is and exactly where they are at all times so that we can successfully reunite them when the time comes. We have to be careful when two similar-looking black horses come in at the same time to make sure we ID them correctly. But paperwork doesn't make for the most compelling game experience, so we only added it via the event cards "Paperwork Errors" and "Bureaucracy." Fun times! Lisa comforting a dog who survived a large wildfire (photo courtesy of North Valley Animal Disaster Group) Sometimes It’s Really, Really SadWe wanted to keep the game hopeful and focused on the rescues, but field work can be pretty rough in a big wildfire. Sometimes we arrive at a property to search for an animal and all that’s left is a smoking ruin. I’ve had to make phone calls to tell someone that we couldn’t find their animal and they probably did not survive. Those phone calls wreck me every single time.But sometimes it goes the right way. Someone has lost their home and all their possessions, but we get to call and tell them that, against all odds, we found their beloved cat and are headed their way to reunite them. It’s those moments that keep me going.Creative Problem-Solving is Always RequiredSome elements of the game surprised me with how much they feel like real world disaster work. The element of creative problem-solving is present in both. Real field teams are constantly asking: What do we do first? How much time do we have before things get dangerous? A fallen tree is blocking the road – can we remove it with the tools we have in the truck? Or instead, can we safely walk the last half mile to the property and lead the horses out? These pigs won’t load into the trailer; can we improvise a loading chute out of the materials lying around here?Animals get up to all kinds of crazy stuff – some real-life stories that I’ve heard didn’t make it into the game because they actually seemed too outlandish. One recent example: some colleagues of mine were called to assist with extracting a pregnant cow from a swimming pool (I'm so curious how she managed to fall in there!). One possible method would involve passing some lifting straps under the cow’s body and hauling her out over the side of the pool, but this was ruled out because of the risk of injury to her unborn calf from the straps. The team ended up draining some water from the pool so that the cow could stand instead of swimming, and then they built a ramp to enable her to walk out on her own. A panicked cow is no joke to deal with, and a cow is less likely than a horse to be used to halters and human handling, so this rescue involved a lot of planning, creativity, and teamwork to come up with an effective method that kept everyone safe.How Realistic is the Game?I’ve been asked how realistic the rescue stories in the game are. Many of the scenarios on the rescue and mission cards were inspired by real-life rescues, but with details adjusted to keep things interesting and to suit the game’s mechanisms. In case you’re wondering, the rescue where the horse falls through the top of the septic tank is actually very realistic – we are trained to watch out for this hazard. A large fire can weaken the top of the underground tank, and when the horse (or a person) walks over it later they can fall through. The horse would definitely need some decontamination afterwards.Regarding the game’s vehicles, real life field teams do use pickup trucks, SUVs, and trailers. Boats are heavily used in water rescues, but you wouldn’t likely see a boat being towed around during a wildfire incident. A car might be used in an incident that affects mainly smaller animals (but is less useful than a larger vehicle). The motorcycle is not that realistic for animal response simply because it can’t hold much in the way of equipment or animal carriers (although perhaps it could be used for scouting an area with poor road access). But for the game, the motorcycle is very fun – I love the visual of a chicken riding on the back!Your Turn!Despite the simplifications and adjustments we had to make, I think we've been able to achieve a lot of the feel of real world animal disaster response with the game. (One of my colleagues is actually toying with the idea of using the game as a training tool for new field team members.) It's been amazing to watch people playtesting the game, getting deeply invested in their complex plans to rescue the cats, while assembling specialists to save the horse, and wait, we need to drop off some equipment to help nail that mission, and OMG WHERE DID THIS TIGER COME FROM? AND WE'RE RUNNING OUT OF TIME ON THE DOG! AND NOW THE BRIDGE IS OUT, YIKES! That's exactly how it feels in the real world – we get tired and hungry, and things go wrong unexpectedly, but we keep going as long as we can for one more animal. And now, you can try this out for yourself!Bonus MaterialsBe sure to check out Lisa’s Real Life Animal Rescue Stories which also includes some stories where the animals are the heroes.Here are some Tips for Being a Real Life Animal Rescuer. We also put these in our rulebook.Notes Fintan Leacock Our family adopted Fintan in 2015. I never thought I’d want a dog, but Anna slowly worked on us by showing us detailed slide presentations, researching non-allegetic dog breeds, and agreeing not to complain about anything for 30 days. (That was some especially creative parenting on our part at the time.) Anna recalls that not complaining for that month was one of the hardest things she’s ever done in her life.Players flew helicopters around and rescued animals from danger. Anna confirmed recently that she did indeed (despite earlier protestations) deliberately change the rules of the game during play so she would win every time.Lisa added the tiger to the game based on real world stories of tigers and other wild animals being rescued from poor conditions under private ownership. This was long before the 2020 lockdown and the popular series, Tiger King.Since the “2” result is on each die twice, you’re more likely to get the average total result of 4 (22.2%) than you are of getting a total result of 5 in Thunderbirds (16.7%).I prototyped these using a laser cut illustration board. When illustration is cut in layers, stacked, glued, and painted, it’s a convincing proxy for wood. The motorcycle in this photo is also prototyped using illustration board.

    • Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship – Design Diary
      by Matt Leacock on June 19, 2025

      OriginsThe Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship has been a long time coming. Its roots can be found in my earliest attempts at game design and my love of Tolkien.My Uncle Pat introduced me to the works of Tolkien when I was a young teenager. This was the same uncle who designed games in his spare time, inspiring me, at a young age, to do the same (1). He gave me a tattered edition of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings along, with a dog-eared copy of Robert Foster’s A Guide to Middle-earth and his copy of Middle-earth Role Playing. I never played the role-playing game, but devoured everything. An early influence Later as a teen, I played Howard Barasch and Richard Berg’s War of the Ring (1977) over Christmas break with my dad. We woke up, had a quick breakfast, then spent the rest of the day playing it, not stopping to eat or even change out of our pajamas. I lost on what was essentially a coin toss at Mount Doom around dinner time. (Then, if I recall correctly, threw a bit of a fit.) We played only the “character game,” not the full war game. The full version was too complex for me at the time, and likely still is. Before War of the Ring, my war game experience was limited to Avalon Hill’s Tactics II (1958), The Battle of the Bulge (1965), and Midway (1964). They didn’t resonate with me at the time: I was neither interested in the stories they told nor their history, and lost to my dad every time, often in a state of frustration.I made an early attempt to create my own fantasy war game, one that was more accessible to me, when I was about 15 years old. I named it Quest of the Nine Orbs. It was highly derivative of War of the Ring, both mechanically and thematically, but I’d left out all the bits that I found frustrating or fiddly. My uncle Pat provided the illustrations. I played the game with friends a few times and then packed it away for nearly 40 years. (2) The board for Quest of the Nine Orbs. Marker on hex boards. Note the resemblance to Middle-earth! Card backs for Quest of the Nine Orbs, illustrated by Pat Leacock. Marker on card, laminated with shelf liner. The game’s plot was pretty thin: the Good player needed to recover the majority of magical orbs and bring them to their capital while the Evil player tried to do the same. The game’s “Cloaked Nornaz,” “Mark of Razum,” and “Men of Dalen” were clearly derived from the Nazgûl, Rohirrim, and Men of Dale. There was even a Gollum-like character who could switch his allegiance. But I had a lot of fun making my own world nonetheless, and took great pleasure in drawing its map.In the mid-2000s, I tried to play Roberto Di Meglio, Marco Maggi, and Francesco Nepitello’s War of the Ring (2004, first edition). I found it difficult to get into, I couldn’t read the tiny type on the cards, and never completed a game.In October of 2021 (35 years after Quest of the Nine Orbs!) things started to come together in my mind. I had both an idea for how I could make a new game based on the story of the War of the Ring along with an opportunity to bring it to market.The opportunity came before the idea. I had discussed a number of different licenses with Z-Man for future Pandemic System games and The Lord of the Rings was an early favorite. The trouble was, I really didn’t have any concept of how I’d pull it off, nor did I have the time or stamina that I figured such a project would require at the time. But a few years after the release and success of Fall of Rome (2018), the ideas started to come together. Fall of Rome featured barbarians migrating across a map of the Roman Empire and includes a dice-based battle system. Perhaps I could modify those mechanisms as a starting point for a game set in Middle-earth?I figured the resulting game might be a good “war game for non-wargamers” since it would be based on a familiar system (Pandemic). And I enjoyed the fun symmetry to all of this: Pandemic itself was influenced by many games, most notably Reiner Knizia’s cooperative game, The Lord of the Rings (2000). It felt like things could come full circle.Starting PointsPandemic System games can be broken down into two major parts: the puzzle the players are trying to solve and the threat that is working against them.At the beginning of development, I kept the puzzle simple. Frodo would need to collect 5 ring cards with the help of the other players, travel to Mordor, and discard them to destroy The Ring. This was similar in a sense to melding 5 cards of the same color to cure a disease at a research station in Pandemic. I put this simple puzzle in place quickly and moved on to work on the threat system. a “Simplest possible experiment.”  I find that I get the best results if I quickly try out something simple and build out from there. This early notebook page has the order of play, actions menu, and shadow card behavior, and the attributes of each location. For the threat, I needed to find some way to model the forces of Sauron, most notably shadow troops marching across Middle-earth and the Nazgûl, flying overhead. Using a simple point-to-point map, I started by playing around with wooden cubes and simple threat cards. While I liked the way characters could move troops around in Fall of Rome and engage enemy forces, I didn’t think the barbarian migration behaviors from that game were suitable for the forces of Sauron. I wanted to see distinct armies of orcs moving across the board that would threaten Minas Tirith and Helm’s Deep – not endless, unbroken streams of troops emanating from Mordor. First pencil sketch of the board from 12 October 2021. An early board undergoing a playtest. The battle lines were a foundational concept. A prototype shadow card. If the top card of the draw pile shows a flag, all the armies on the pictured battle line (from Umbar to Helm’s Deep) advance. If the top card shows a banner, then the army in Umbar is reinforced. I came upon a mechanism I really liked: by using shadow cards with two different behaviors, “reinforce” or “advance,” armies could accumulate troops before they marched out into battle. The shadow cards each showed both behaviors (reinforce and advance) and the top card of the shadow deck would indicate which of the two behaviors triggered with each card draw. This idea hooked me right away and became the core of the threat engine. I spent over two years refining it.By interweaving the lines the troops used to advance on the board, I found that these armies could have behaviors that could be anticipated but not wholly predicted. Troops from Núrn typically march forth to attack Minas Tirith, but depending on the specific order the shadow cards were drawn, they might instead march on Helm’s Deep, The Woodland Realm, Erebor, Lórien, Dol Amroth, or in rarer combinations, locations as far away as The Grey Havens or even The Shire or Rivendell.I brought a bare bones prototype to The Gathering of Friends, a game convention that I attend each year. Despite how raw the game was, playtesters liked what they saw so far and encouraged me to keep at it. On arriving home and learning that I’d been exposed to COVID at The Gathering, I sequestered myself in a back bedroom and spent two days in isolation, working on the game nonstop using all the data and ideas I’d collected at the convention. Solo tests of the early game during isolation. Major Problems to SolveTraversing Middle-earthThe first major problem I had to solve was figuring out how to make movement across Middle-earth interesting and viable. You fly around the board in Pandemic, take trains across Iberia, and can sail across the Mediterranean in Fall of Rome, all letting you cover a lot of ground quickly. The residents of Middle-earth (with the exception of some travel on horseback and the occasional eagle) are largely crossing their large world fairly slowly, on foot.Early on in development, I gave each player two characters to play instead of one. This made the game feel much better since The Lord of the Rings features such a large ensemble of characters. (For example, in a two-player game, having a Fellowship made up of only two characters, one being Frodo, felt really wrong.) But having a larger cast also meant that more of the board would be easily reachable with more characters in more places.To make movement faster and more interesting, I let characters move along with each other. This was appropriate thematically: The Fellowship traveled together, after all. But it also meant that their effective range of movement could be much greater if needed. Aragorn could, for example, lead Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin to from Bree to Rivendell to join Gandalf on his turn. Then Gandalf could lead the group further south to the Fords of Isen on his turn, to be led even further east through Rohan by Éowyn on her turn.Character ClumpingEarly tests showed that all this traveling together could be a problem, however, as there was a tendency for everyone to bunch together in one big group over much of the game, making it far less interesting. I certainly didn’t want the dominant strategy to be having the entire Fellowship sneak into Mordor together!To address this, I need the characters to be strong together but then present a whole host of reasons why they needed to be apart.To start, I developed the shadow cards and battle lines so that the shadow troops would threaten multiple havens in different regions of the board, often at the same time. In this way, players couldn’t accompany Frodo and also defend Helm’s Deep or Minas Tirith at the same time. (While there are some friendly troops in the havens that can defend themselves to some degree, they can’t move or muster on their own. So if the Rohirrim need to rush to defend Minas Tirith, a player character needs to ensure that happens. And if the Easterlings are marching on Dale, well, another player character is going to need to do something about that.) This kept the characters as the major agents of change in the story and required them to be active and make tradeoffs, all over the board.Easy Melds, Monotony, and GrindCreating fires all over the board worked pretty well to break up The Fellowship. But other problems reared their ugly heads:What happens if Frodo draws a lot of ring cards early in the game? He can just sprint to Mordor and win.How do I prevent each game from being the same, well-worn march to Mount Doom?How can I make each region of the board interesting and active?The ring-melding problem plagued me. For nearly a year, I had the players add the ring cards to each section of the deck along with the Skies Darken cards (the cards that function like Epidemic cards). While this technically worked, it felt clunky. It required additional setup, but worse, it felt like the players were playing the game only to bide the time that was required to draw the ring cards they needed. It felt grindy. It felt like work.A Breakthrough – Objective Cards Martin Bouchard at The Gathering of Friends (3) Fortunately, I found a solution that addressed all of the above problems and more. About a year into development, after some fruitful conversations with Martin Bouchard, I added objective cards to the game. Like any great design solution, they solved more than one problem at the same time:They provided incremental goals to the game. Before I added objectives, the players’ experience was one long, slow, slip into a pit of despair, resolving all at once only at the very end of the game. With the introduction of the new objectives, hope could be rekindled at several points during the game. Completing an objective felt like an act break and helped generate a series of upbeats and downbeats – a simple, proven foundation for a compelling story.They let me introduce additional non-player characters, threats, and subplots without complicating the core game with additional subsystems. The Balrog, Shelob, Denethor, Théoden, the Dead Men of Dunharrow, and others appear in the game in this way.They opened up the world of the game, allowing for more counterfactuals to be explored. What if peace was made with the Dunlendings? What if you weren’t exactly sure when Gandalf would appear after his fight with the Balrog? What if Moria, Osgiliath, or even Minas Morgul was retaken by the Free Peoples?Mechanically, the objectives provided uses for all the other suits of player cards used in the game. In addition to needing to collect the ring (resistance) suit, you might need to meld friendship, stealth, or valor. This solved the problem I had where the players might draw all the ring cards they needed during the first round of the game. With the addition of these other melds, drawing rings early was no longer a blessing since they’d compete for space in your hand with all the other cards needed for the other objectives. This simplified the game’s setup and gave the players flexibility over which objectives to attempt to complete first.They simplified the presentation of the rules for destroying The Ring. Instead of needing to learn and remember the rules for this one-time action as part of the core game, the rules could simply be presented off to the side, on the card for its objective, next to every other objective.They provided a more compelling way to scale the difficulty of the game. Players could make the game harder by introducing more objectives instead of just increasing the number and rate of shadow troops that are added to the board.Managing ComplexityDevelopment was a constant struggle to resolve the tension between bringing to life more iconic story moments while keeping complexity under control. I found that I could integrate many one-off story elements through the game’s objective cards, event cards, and character abilities, but needed some additional subsystems to make the core game tick.Two of these important subsystems relied on dice: the way the Nazgûl search for Frodo and the way battles are conducted. As these systems evolved, their reference cards saw more iterations than any other element in the game. This video, showing the evolution of the reference cards, gives you a good sense of this iteration: The game started like many of the other Pandemic System games, with a single way to win and multiple ways to lose. The problem I started to have, however, was that the number of ways to lose kept piling up and keeping track of all these game loss conditions made the game feel more complex. At one point you could lose the game if shadow troops captured two havens, if you ran out of player cards, if you ran out shadow troops, or if the Ring-bearer took on too much corruption or perished. Not only was this a lot to keep track of, it was unforgiving! In an early demo to the publisher we lost the game on turn four when a single haven was lost. (4) I eventually solved this by funneling all of these loss conditions into a single number: Frodo’s despair. This made the game more dynamic and forgiving (you could gain hope as well as despair and survive the loss of havens) and you could have exciting finishes where you won the game even after all the player cards or shadow troops were exhausted.Perhaps the trickiest bit of all was managing the overall visual complexity of the board. Players reported enjoying the way the troops accumulated and moved along the battle lines as one of their favorite aspects of the game. But, in addition to simply making them work as a game element, keeping the battle lines from looking like a jumbled pile of spaghetti – while still being accessible to players with limited color vision – was quite the challenge. The map underwent dozens of iterations, many of which are captured in this video: Another key part of managing all this complexity was killing some darlings.Abandoned ConceptsCharacter Combat, Wounds, Perishing, Different Ring-bearersBefore I had the objective system, and inspired by the 1977 edition of War of the Ring, I went down a path where player characters could confront many of the servants of shadow (The Nazgûl, The Balrog, Shelob, The Watcher in the Water, even Old Man Willow and many others) in head-to-head encounters. Players used the battle dice to resolve individual combat, took wounds, and could even perish. And that, in turn, could mean needing new Ring-bearers…Needless to say, this was all very complicated and didn’t serve the story particularly well. (Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin shouldn’t be able to defeat the Balrog on their own, for example!) I simplified and removed these elements. The Nazgûl now cause despair rather than wounds. Iconic foes such as The Balrog and Shelob appear instead on objective cards. And only Frodo can now carry and destroy The Ring. (That change alone, saved nearly a page of rules.) As a result, the game felt much tighter, took far less time to learn, and still contained all of its key moments. Evolving CharactersTaking cues from the story and other War of the Ring games, I experimented with versions of Gandalf, Aragorn, and Gollum that could grow stronger or transform. Gandalf the Grey could become Gandalf the White, Strider could become Aragorn, and Sméagol could transform into Gollum and back again. I loved this concept and must have tried at least a dozen versions of Gollum/Sméagol alone. While these all had their charms, they ultimately proved too complex. I found simpler ways to include these elements using character abilities and objective cards. Only Gandalf now undergoes a change and only after confronting the Balrog.Some of the many (complex looking!) versions of Gollum below. Click to see a larger version. View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize Mobilization, Zones of Control, Stacking Limits Yeah, I don’t think that we’re going to retake Minas Tirith in this game. Fortunately, it looks like Frodo & Sam, Gollum (and Aragorn!) may have succeeded at Mount Doom nonetheless. I experimented with some rules that restricted both the addition and movement of friendly troops to satisfy the expectations of people familiar with war games. I ultimately removed these rules to increase player agency, minimize frustration, simplify the game, and reduce the number of errors I’d seen in playtesting. I kept some of the thematic aspects around mobilizing the Free Peoples in some of the objective cards without complicating the game’s core rules.For a long while, I limited the number of troops of a given army to 3 cubes, mostly out of habit. The game got significantly easier to learn and more fun to play when I dropped that restriction. It’s a good rule of thumb: when in doubt, drop the restriction.Location Effects and EquipmentThe landscape of Middle-earth is rich with story. To bring its locations to life and provide additional reasons to visit the various regions of the board I’d initially included a “location event” on nearly half of the player cards. This meant that in addition to seeing a location name and suit on each card, you’d have an effect you could trigger if your character was in the specified location. This provided a rich tapestry of options and potential stories. It also made players’ heads explode and added substantially to the play length. I first moved these effects onto the ring cards and then I boosted their strength and moved the best of them onto dedicated event cards. The effects felt better, play length dropped, and heads stopped exploding. Similarly, I experimented with an equipment deck that players could spend friendship on. The results were dull: it turns out that characters are much more exciting than objects and the deck didn’t add any interesting decisions to the game. I quickly dropped it.Staying True to Tolkien’s WorldI wanted one of the central themes of the book, that even the least of us, standing up to our oppressors, even at overwhelming odds, can make the difference. So, while I briefly considered letting the players win through some sort of military victory (capturing Barad-dûr, for example), I abandoned it fairly quickly. And I never considered letting the players keep The Ring or to use it militarily. You can only use it to avoid shadow troops temporarily, and even that comes at a cost to Frodo.Which leads to the way Frodo’s struggle is characterized in the game. This evolved over time. In early versions Frodo gradually underwent “corruption.” This changed midway through development into a struggle with despair. That in turn, changed again as opportunities for “recovering despair” multiplied. We changed “recovering despair” to “gaining hope” since that sounded more natural.I initially made the change from corruption to despair to better explain why losing a haven of the Free Peoples might lead to defeat, but I’d argue the struggle between hope and despair is a more important theme in the book than Frodo’s struggle to resist The Ring’s corrupting influence. (5) But do note that I was able to capture that final moment of struggle against The Ring’s corrupting influence with a final die roll on Mount Doom, where Frodo is better able to resist if he’s suffering from less despair.Regarding that final die roll: it was important to me that there was some uncertainty regarding The Ring’s final destruction at Mount Doom. This is in keeping with the story. Recall that in the book, Frodo decides to keep The Ring for himself and if it wasn’t for Gollum’s actions at the last moment, it likely would not have been destroyed. But this is also important mechanically: if you’re able to predict with absolute certainty how the game will play out in the final act, there’s less tension and this typically leads to a less satisfying finish. This, of course, needs to be balanced out: you don’t want the game to end on a coin flip! (I learned for myself with my early experience with War of the Ring.) I was able to resolve these forces by requiring a roll in most cases, while also giving the players multiple ways to mitigate its outcome. Other characters (most notably Sam and Gollum) can help, Frodo and other characters can bring extra resistance with them to reroll dice, and players can use event cards. And the test doesn’t even need to be made if Frodo is in really good condition and there are few Nazgûl around.Bonus MaterialsDevelopment HistoryI’ve written up an abridged history of the game’s development, pulling notes from my design journal (6) for those who are interested in a closer look at how the design came together.Sources and TriviaWhile the game is based specifically on The Lord of the Rings book, I consumed all manner of other related media, using various wikis, the movies, Karen Wynn Fonstad’s excellent Atlas of Middle Earth, and many other games on the subject. Like any fan of Tolkien, trivia started to quickly accumulate in my brain. I thought I’d share some of it in my own, short trivia quiz. Let me know how you fare. If you’re an orc and want to travel from Núrn to the Grey Havens, how many times will you need to change lines? Tube MapI’m recently back from UK Games Expo where we pre-released the game. Before heading up to Birmingham for the conference I spent the day touring London to get over my jet lag. There, I made good use of the London Tube Map. Later, at the conference, during a demo, one of the players noted that the battle lines on the board reminded them of the tube map. That got me thinking. And then, I simply couldn’t resist.ThanksThese games are the result of many talented people working together. First, massive thanks go out to the Z-Man development team. Kevin Ellenberg was a reliable and patient partner who carefully documented many playtests and helped break them down with scientific precision. The product’s gorgeous appearance came together under Bree Woodward’s steady and confident hand. We were fortunate that Sam Shimota was available to work out the challenging graphic design of the board (Sam had proven his skill on other Pandemic System titles including Fall of Rome) and Jared Blando brought many playful storytelling elements to life in the illustrations and cartography for the board. Meanwhile, Cory Godbey provided wonderful character illustrations. This is Corey’s second board game project ever; the first was his work on another title of mine, Ziggurat, and I was so happy when Bree independently discovered and suggested he work on this game.On the playtesting side, huge thanks go to Randy Hoyt, Rich Fulcher, Brent Lloyd, and Corey Thompson. They each played the game many times and offered countless suggestions over multiple years. Thanks also to Paolo Mori for some of the foundational work on Fall of Rome, to Tom Lehmann for his suggestions and support over the years, and to Pete Fenlon for his encouragement.NotesThis same Pat Leacock (coincidentally) led Elizabeth Hargrave (of Undergrove and Wingspan fame) on a mushroom foray in the Chicagoland area before I met her.Please do not add this game to BGG’s database. I only made one prototype and I promise you, it wasn’t very good.Like the original Pandemic, I’d end up taking this game to the Gathering three successive years.Here’s a tip: when demoing a cooperative game to a publisher, make sure you don’t lose on the fourth turn.A simple measure: “despair” appears 63 times in the novel while variations of “corrupt” appear only 8 times.The journal’s first entry was 14 October 2021, its last entry was 19 December 2024, and it ended up being over 750 pages long.

    • Find me on bluesky and Substack
      by Matt Leacock on November 25, 2024

      The migration continues!I’ve moved from X to bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/mattleacock.bsky.socialI also pen a newsletter, Leacock’s Lab, which I send out about every 1–3 months. You can sign up for that and see older posts on Substack:https://mattleacock.substack.com/I’ll keep this blog up in case I have the itch to write anything longer. If there’s anything in particular you’d like to learn more about, feel free to drop a comment here or get in touch.

    • Coming Soon: Leacock's Lab
      by Matt Leacock on June 6, 2024

      After many months of hemming and hawing, I’m finally taking the plunge and setting up a newsletter for my games since this blog isn’t usually timely enough and many folks are drifting from social media. I plan on posting about every other month. Subscribe now using the box below to start receiving updates!

    • Forbidden Jungle – Design Diary
      by Matt Leacock on August 10, 2023

      After several years of design and development, Forbidden Jungle is finally here! In this diary, I’ll recount the search for the setting, some of the design challenges I faced, and look to what’s next.The Setting The adventurers lift off from Forbidden Island in their helicopter to later escape in a rebuilt airship in Forbidden Desert, then power a rocket to lift off in Forbidden Sky. When I began the design of the fourth game in the Forbidden series, the first thing I tackled was its setting. Players had already encountered a sinking island, a perilous desert, and a mysterious power platform in the sky. What was next? I figured that since Forbidden Sky ends with the players taking off in a rocket, I should pursue an outer space setting. So my initial design had the adventurers dock their rocket at a space station that I populated with self-replicating maintenance robots. The players would need to explore the station, avoid the robots, and find some means of escape. I gave the new prototype the tentative name, “Forbidden Station.” One problem: I hated the name. The setting felt too cold and clinical. And it didn’t seem to be in line with the line’s “adventure” genre. A screen grab from a fairly early Forbidden Station prototype file (July 2021). A screen grab from an early Forbidden Island prototype. Forbidden Island also began its life with a space theme. Coincidentally, way back in 2009, I pitched the design that went on to become Forbidden Island also as a space game. In the first prototype, Asteroid Storm, the players were in a spaceship that had drifted into an asteroid field. They needed to gather up four pieces of equipment (space suits, food for the journey, a flight plan, and their alien artifact*) and make it to the escape pod before their ship was blown to pieces. During play, asteroids slammed into the ship, damaging it, and if damaged pieces were hit again, they were removed from play.Because Gamewright wanted to avoid a space theme, we switched its setting to sinking island. The modules of the space station became different locations on a mythical island and the equipment to be gathered became treasures that the players would need to collect. CB Canga’s artwork brought the game to life and we all agreed that this story and setting was much stronger.Forbidden Jungle saw a similar shift during development. I changed the space station into an abandoned spaceport on a remote moon, overcome by encroaching jungle (think: Yavin 4 from Star Wars). I changed the self-replicating robots into aliens that resembled spiders.I found that using spiders had lots of advantages: they could be shown in various life stages: egg, hatchling, and adult, they could sting the adventurers, and they could spin webs to block tile exits. While the self-replicating robots functioned in similar ways (they came in small, medium, and large sizes, could zap adventurers, and spray hull-reinforcing, hardening foam to block the exits) they felt like much more of a stretch thematically. (I especially grew tired of explaining the idea behind the foam.) But the biggest reason I changed from station to jungle was how I imagined the setting would be brought to life in the game’s illustrations. An ancient spaceport, overrun by jungle and inhabited by spiders would result in much more pleasing and lush visuals compared to the (typically) sterile environment that a space station suggests. Jungle felt like a better fit.DifferentiationI never want to add a title to a series unless it offers something new to it – so a player would consider owning every game in the line. Forbidden Island offers an easy onramp and features a rapidly shrinking board. Forbidden Desert ramps up the challenge and has players shifting the board around as the winds of the sandstorm dictate. Forbidden Sky has players exploring and building their board as they go. For me, the challenge for game #4 was, after shrinking, shifting, and building what’s next?I ultimately answered this question by sampling a little bit from each of the earlier titles. As you play Forbidden Jungle, different tiles sink into sinkholes, shrinking the board like Forbidden Island. You explore the jungle, flipping tiles over to see what’s inside them and can shift them in a way that is similar to Forbidden Desert. And you must also assemble your escape route by arranging a portal next to four powered gems. This echoes how you power up the rocket in Forbidden Sky. There are callbacks in Jungle to each of the preceding titles.The AntagonistsInstead of relying solely on the board to differentiate the game, I decided to focus on its antagonists. Forbidden Jungle is the first game in the series to feature baddies that are actively out to get you. In contrast, the other titles all feature environmental threats – rising water (threat of drowning), a blowing sandstorm (threats of exposure, dehydration, being buried alive), and a thunderstorm (threats of electrocution or falling from a great height). In Jungle, players must avoid being overrun or poisoned by the spiders.I was especially drawn to having a stronger sense of an embodied threat on the board after seeing the reception of Forbidden Sky. Forbidden Sky has you constructing an elaborate – and functional! – electrical circuit to power your escape which is thrilling when you can accomplish it, but the antagonists in the game are quite abstract. You’re up against time, the threat of being struck by lightning, and the strength of your rope – none of which are shown on the board. You don’t get the visceral sense of an island rapidly shrinking to only a handful of tiles or sand accumulating into larger and larger dunes. With this new game, I wanted even casual observers to be able to glance at the game on the table and think: oh, wow, I can see that you’re all in a lot of danger!But picking a baddie for a game targeted at kids and families can be a challenge. You don’t want to pick an antagonist that is too scary and yet, you don’t want the players to feel remorse after removing them. I was initially excited about the robots since they can be disassembled without too much fuss on the players’ part. But it turns out that creepy, dangerous, otherworldly spiders also felt like fair game – especially if they are aiming to sting or bite you.The inspiration behind the three life stages of the spiders (egg, hatchling, and adult) came from Tom Wham’s classic game, The Awful Green Things from Outer Space which I played and loved in college and the movie Alien, both, coincidentally from 1979. (Though in this game, the hatchlings are relatively harmless, unlike the face-huggers of Alien.)The MachinesWith the threat well established, I wanted the players to have a robust set of options to consider while solving it. To that end, Forbidden Jungle offers a variety of machines that you can discover that unlock new abilities:The Destruct Switch gives you the power to destroy a tile in the game – and everything on it – by spending a single action. Being able to blow up a tile full of spiders can feel incredibly powerful. You need to show some restraint though: if you blow up all of the portals (or any of the illuminated gems), you’ll find yourself without a way out.The Configurator allows you to rearrange the space station’s tiles, moving them like a sliding puzzle. This has all sorts of uses: first, you can slide gems next to an escape portal to power it – but you can also slide tiles containing other adventurers to help them move or slide spiders closer to the Electrifier which works as a glorified bug zapper.The Compeller lets you move a group of hatchlings and adults from one tile to another. This can be handy if they’re in your way, about to sting your friend. You can also move them into the Electrifier. Zap!The Portal is about as simple a machine as you can get. It features one button. If you press it, you win the game! (Provided that everyone is assembled on the tile, it’s powered up, and there aren’t any aliens on the tile.)These special tiles let me expand the range of options available to the players, widening out space of possible solutions, without dramatically increasing the complexity of the overall game. Samples of the machines from a printer’s proof. (Images may change slightly in the final game) Design Challenges Managing TensionMaintaining the spider population proved to be one of the thorniest design challenges. Early versions of the game relied solely on the threat cards that managed the life cycles of the spiders. These cards have the adults lay eggs, turn eggs into hatchlings, and turn hatchlings into adults (who can then lay more eggs). This worked great, except that if the players managed to clear the board of spiders, their population would crash, bottoming out most of the tension for the remainder of the game. To solve this, I supplemented the life cycle cards with three new cards that have adults emerging from the portals, hatchlings emerging from the tunnels, and eggs being discovered in nests. With this design, as you explore more and more of the board, more portals, tunnels, and nests appear and the danger increases in parallel. These six cards increase the population of spiders in the jungle. Early prototypes only used the first three cards. The last three cards ramp up the tension of the game as more and more of the jungle is explored. Doubling Down on FunIn playtesting, players found blowing up tiles felt incredibly satisfying. Early prototypes had only a single piece of equipment (Explosives) that let you remove a tile adjacent to your adventurer. To give players more opportunities to blow stuff up, I added the Destruct Switch… and then a second Destruct Switch! These tiles not only let you blow up spiders, but also allow you to remove tiles that may be in the way of completing the puzzle.Eliminating GrindEarly prototypes featured “Computers” that could only shift a tile up/down or left/right. In testing, these felt quite grindy. You’d need to move to one computer, operate it to move tiles in one direction, then run to a different computer, and operate it to move it in another direction, and so on. The Configurators in the final version of the game let you feel much more powerful—you can choose any direction: up, down, left, or right, then move the tile any number of spaces in that direction. Forbidden Station also had players managing their oxygen levels like water in Forbidden Desert. This was a bit too similar to Desert, felt mostly like work, and since the game already had plenty of other problems to juggle, I was happy to ditch it.Designing the Alien FiguresIt took a bunch of iterations to nail the figures down. The adults had to be scary but not too scary. (Some early versions were quite goofy looking.) The final adults are quite tall which let them have long, scary legs without taking up too much space on a tile. I specified little nubs on the ridges of the hatchlings so they’d be easier to pick up off the tiles. And getting the small/medium/large proportions just right was surprisingly difficult. The illustrator, C.B. Canga specified a color palette for them which helped them coordinate with his illustrations while feeling otherworldly. A partial evolution of the adult spider. As they evolved, the adults lost their goofy grin, collar, and stinger and grew sharp teeth. The left two figures are from .stls found on the web and were used for inspiration. The Sculpey one was made by my daughter Anna as part of an experiment exploring scale. Early (left) and final (right) aliens: adult, hatchling, and egg. I had the sculptor add nubs to the edges of the hatchling so they’d be easier to pick up. The most important change here was a sense of large/medium/small scale. In the original metal comps the hatchling looks smaller than the egg!  Replay and VariabilityIn response to all the enthusiasm for the variable island layouts that were first featured in the German edition of the Forbidden Island, I included six different spaceport designs with Forbidden Jungle so that you can try your hand at each one of them. Their design was a bit counter-intuitive – denser spaceport layouts were actually harder to play since the tiles have fewer degrees of movement.To ensure variety and challenge, your next game can feature a different mix of adventurers, explored machines, equipment cards, random tile arrangement, along with a different spaceport design and/or difficulty setting.Beyond the Portal Different space station layouts add variety to the game. If and when the adventurers escape, what lies beyond the portal? Will they ever find the Archeans? I’d love to hear your theories! *I was able to realize a similar objective in Space Escape (formerly Mole Rats in Space), except that the alien artifact became a toothbrush, along with a few other tweaks. They both featured duct tape.

    • How to Play Daybreak
      by Matt Leacock on July 5, 2023

      CMYK posted a new version of the How to Play video for Daybreak. I’m really happy with how it turned out!

    • Daybreak Design Diaries
      by Matt Leacock on October 4, 2022

      An early prototype of Daybreak Matteo and I have been busy documenting the journey we took while designing Daybreak.Here are all the entries we have published and planned to date:Why We Made DaybreakAntagonists and ImpactsModels and ResourcesPlayers and Powers Winning and LosingWe enjoyed looking through the hundreds of photos, dozens of kits, and our 500+ page design journal when putting this together. We’re now entering one of my favorite stages of a project: reviewing and evaluating all the product, graphic design, illustration, and editorial choices for the game.Hope you enjoy this look into our process. If there are any other aspects you’d like to know about, please leave a comment!

    • Daybreak is Live on Backerkit!
      by Matt Leacock on September 20, 2022

      After more than two years of design, Daybreak is now live on Backerkit. Check it out!

    • Daybreak – Crowdfunding Begins on September 20th!
      by Matt Leacock on September 12, 2022

      We’ll be crowdfunding Daybreak on BackerKit starting on 20 September 2022.Sign up to be notified when the project goes live!Daybreak is a cooperative boardgame about stopping climate change. It presents an optimistic vision of the near future, where you and your friends get to build the mind-blowing technologies and resilient societies we need to decarbonize the world.I designed it with Matteo Menapace and the game be published by CMYK Games. It’s expected to ship in 2023.Find out more at daybreakgame.org.

    • Daybreak Overview in 7 Minutes
      by Matt Leacock on September 29, 2021

      No small part of game design involves figuring out how to best explain your game. An old adage of software design was, “write the manual first” as this forces you to think about how the end user will experience your product. This carries over into game design as well: if, when writing the rules or teaching a game you find that you can’t explain it, it’s time to have a hard look at the underlying design.Below you can see a 7-minute overview of the in-progress game, Daybreak that I shot yesterday for a group who will be playing this Friday.The game continues to evolve, but it’s exciting to see the changes get smaller and smaller with each iteration. Once that wraps up, we’ll shift into product design and at some point, our videos won’t feature so much shiny Scotch tape and awkward transitions. In the meantime, have a look and let me know in the comments below if you have any impressions.If you found this interesting, you can follow our design process more closely in our design log. You can also sign up for exactly 1 email when Daybreak launches at daybreakgame.org.UPDATE:The new, updated version of the video is now available: You can also check out the first version of the video that originally accompanied this post.

    • Daybreak – A Cooperative Game About Climate Action
      by Matt Leacock on April 22, 2021

      Donna and Colleen at the end of a testing session of Daybreak. In August 2019 a climate scientist named Declan Finney emailed me, explaining in great detail the gravity of the climate crisis and offering to help re-theme Pandemic to fit the topic. The idea was to help people better understand the situation and what could be done by wrapping it up into a game. This was a bit of a kick in the pants for me. I’d been thinking about doing something similar for some time, but hadn’t started on anything. I began researching. Months passed. I decided that the topic was deserving of its own game (not a re-theme of Pandemic) but it also felt enormous, daunting, and somewhat hopeless to me.Then, in April 2020, I came across an article about learning from Pandemic during the Pandemic on Twitter, written by Matteo Menapace. I noticed from Matteo’s bio that he was interested in games and climate and contacted him about the possibility of collaborating on a game about the climate crisis with me. We hit it off and we’ve been working together ever since. Photo: Peter Prato for The New York Times Here we are, one year later, and we have a design—Daybreak—that we’ve been putting through its paces, both on the table (with our families) and in Tabletopia (with everyone else).Daybreak puts you in the role of a world power. Your goal is to decarbonize your economy while at the same time build up the resilience your people will need to survive climate-induced crises.If you and the other players can collectively draw down emissions to net zero while ensuring that no single player has too many people in crisis, you all win the game. This is quite difficult—but crucially, possible.If you’d like to learn more about the game, Matteo has written an overview of the design so far. We also did interviews with the New York Times, Wired, and Polygon.This has been one of the most rewarding designs I’ve worked on to date: the problems we face with global warming are deep and complex. Turning them into game dynamics that are representative, balanced, and—perhaps most importantly—engaging and fun to play is a steep challenge. And we want to get it right. To that end, we’re looking for critical reviewers. If you think you might be a good fit for this, have a look at what we’re looking for and let us know.I’m also happy to share that CMYK has come on board to publish the game. If you’re interested, you can sign up to get exactly one email when the game launches.And finally, happy Earth Day everyone! I hope you can find a meaningful way to observe this day, even it’s as simple as taking a walk or hike outdoors.

    • Forbidden Island Now on Board Game Arena
      by Matt Leacock on October 14, 2020

      If you’re like me and isolating due to Covid, you’ve probably had to find new ways to play boardgames with friends. I’ve been playing boardgames online now with two groups of friends and one of our most frequent stops is Board Game Arena.So I was happy to learn that Forbidden Island is now available to play on the platform, starting today. If you haven’t checked out BGA, have a look. They have many games that are free to play; other games require a premium membership, which will run you about $2 per month for unlimited use and it allows you to host games for others who don’t need to pay themselves.I also found it fun to learn that Jeff DiCorpo implemented the game. Jeff’s local to the San Francisco Bay Area, and we’ve been gaming together on and off for many years. Thanks Jeff!

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