by BGG Cranio

Diary written by Johannes Goupy & Matthieu Verdier

Crossing Heroes is our second game together after Odysseus, a family game published in France by Gigamic in September 2026. While both games reflect our love of Greek mythology and revolve around acquiring the right skills to overcome heroic challenges, they offer two completely different gameplay experiences!

February 2025

We met at the Festival International des Jeux in Cannes to discuss new game together. Having already worked on Odysseus, we wanted to explore another Greek hero and continue our journey through Greek mythology. After a short brainstorming session about games inspired by this universe (particularly The Oracle of Delphi by Stefan Feld) we settled on The Twelve Labors of Heracles.

From the very beginning, we agreed on one key aspect: completing a Labor would require players to hold the necessary Skills. And once a Trial had been completed, the card would be flipped to its reverse side, revealing a different illustration: we chose a black-and-white front for ongoing Trials, and a full-color back for completed Trials.

June 2025

June and July 2025 turned out to be incredibly intense months for the development of Crossing Heroes. In fact, the game reached something very close to its final form in just about a month!

Our first prototype featured:

– 4 Skills: Strength, Wisdom, Endurance, and Cunning. Luck wasn’t there yet,probably because Heracles didn’t rely on it very often!

– 5 Gods (Hades would later disappear) all of whom were required to complete Trials.

On your turn, you would take a Trial card and place it around your Hero, just like in the final version. Each Trial granted a reward, but at this stage players simply drew Skill cards into their hand and had to discard them to complete their Trials.

The first Trial Cards

The first Skill Cards
Players could also gain XP, represented by a track printed directly on the Hero card, located in the center of the 3×3 grid. Once the track reached its end, the Hero card was flipped over so progression could continue on the reverse side: not exactly the most ergonomic solution! You can also spot connection bonuses on these early Hero cards, although they disappeared only a few days later.

The first Hero cards and their XP track
The first major issue quickly became obvious. Drawing Skill cards, managing your hand, and immediately discarding those cards to complete Trials simply wasn’t much fun. It also made it difficult for opponents to follow what you were building, and gave the unpleasant feeling of constantly drawing and throwing away cards without any real sense of progression or long-term development.

Next, we completely reworked the role of the Gods. Instead of acting as a resource, they became tags attached to each Trial, opening up possibilities for collection and end-game scoring. We also introduced a second type of resource, rarer than Skills: Supports (represented by a star icon), divided into three categories: Naval, Military, and Human.

Four Skills plus three different Supports… still too many icons!
We then realized that the theme itself was becoming too restrictive. Players had to select one of Heracles’ Trials for each turn over the course of eight rounds, but since there are only twelve Labors, each one had to appear four times to support a five-player game. This made players no longer feel like they were facing unique challenges. Plus, this could result in players having to complete the same Trial twice, but it felt completely unthematic, and players could find themselves blocked if their remaining options became unavailable.

That was the moment when we had the idea that completely changed the project: instead of focusing exclusively on Heracles, why not embrace the entire world of Greek heroes?

Suddenly, everything became possible. We could follow Odysseus as he outwitted the Cyclops or resisted the Sirens, accompany Jason on the quest for the Golden Fleece, help Perseus defeat Medusa, relive Bellerophon’s battle against the Chimera, or venture into the Labyrinth alongside Theseus. Overnight, we had dozens of iconic Trials to draw inspiration from.

This proved to be a decisive turning point for both game design and storytelling. However, researching thirty-six additional episodes of Greek mythology would simply have taken too long, so we kept the Labors repeated four times for now, to focus on refining the mechanics first.

Rethinking the Skill System

Now, we needed a better way to use Skills: we wanted them to become permanent elements of your Hero. That’s when we came up with the idea of acquiring Skill cards and placing them around the Trial cards, allowing every Trial in the same row or column to benefit from them.

XP and gold, however, were still a real issue: XP never felt especially rewarding, while gold only helped players choose Skill cards or refill the market.

So we tried something else, coming up with Prosperity tiles, which could be bought with gold, and Zeus tiles, which were awarded to players who completed at least one Trial associated with each of the other four Greek Gods. But still, despite all our efforts, the game didn’t feel completely engaging.

new versions of the Hero boards, along with the first prosperity tiles (later became items) and the Zeus tiles (later removed)
In just one month, the effort we poured in this project, as well as the results we got, were absolutely staggering.
The major changes that emerged during this incredibly creative period include:

– We removed Supports altogether and introduced a fifth Skill: Luck, which, after all, proved quite useful to many Greek heroes!
– We removed the XP system, replacing it with a much simpler personal scoring objective worth 2 Victory Points for each Skill symbol of the indicated type.
– We introduced the concept of Kleos (Glory), initially represented by a lyre and later replaced by a column. We decided to place these symbols would provide players with an exponential scoring, creating an interesting push-your-luck decision.
– We replaced the Prosperity tiles with 12 thematic Items that would have an actual function.

Thanks to some of them, some Trials would now double their Victory Points if you possessed the corresponding Item. Others, instead, focused on combo scoring. This allowed us to completely remove the Zeus tiles.

July 2025 Version

By mid-July 2025, this version of the game was essentially complete.

We let it rest over the summer before presenting it in autumn. By then Matthieu Verdier and Simone Lucianiwere already collaborating on Minikin City, and Simone’s interest in a similarly-scoped game got our game in front of the Cranio Creations team. The reception was very positive: the game was seen as already solid, needing only minor work: four extra Items for better availability and variety in 4-5 player games have been added and a few Trial cards for more variety and small balance tweaks have been reworked.

July 2025 version of the game
Bringing the World of Greek Heroes to life

The editorial work that followed was simply exceptional.
We immediately fell in love with Arianna Santini‘s art direction, beautifully inspired by the imagery of ancient Greek pottery, as well as Lorenzo Colangeli‘s illustrations, which brought each Trial to life with remarkable personality.

When you finally get your copy of the game, we encourage you to look only at the front of each Trial card before playing. Then, when you successfully complete a Trial and flip it over, you’ll discover its title along with the stunning foil treatment applied to the illustration. For a brief moment, you’ll feel just like one of the legendary heroes of Greek mythology.

One last trial…

We hope you’ll enjoy discovering Crossing Heroes as much as we enjoyed creating it. Plus, as you play, we hope you’ll notice all the little thematic details hidden throughout the game, from the illustrations to the Skills required to overcome each Trial. After all, defeating the Nemean Lion demands tremendous Strength!

And remember, completed Trial is another step toward earning your own Kleos, the everlasting glory sought by every Greek hero.
We hope your journey through these myths will be just as memorable as ours was while bringing them to life.

Johannes & Mathieu