by Sandro Blasich

I’ve been designing board games for more than 10 years but it all started from fun. I had an opportunity to go to SPIEL Essen and I went and I felt like a kid entering the chocolate factory. I was completely blown away. I was there with a couple of guys that pitched their board games. So, I thought if they can do it, why shouldn’t I at least try it too.

Thus I started designing more and more and I finished a board game that I wanted to pitch at Essen. That was in 2017. I had lots of meetings but I had no success. In my opinion, I had good games but nobody was interested enough to publish them. Little by little, I started to loose my enthusiasm for designing games and I told myself that I needed to take a break from game design but I couldn’t, new ideas just came to me all the time.

Then, I designed a game just for myself. A friend saw it and he said that I have an excellent game. I didn’t plan to pitch it but finally I did it and I signed the contract. However, it took several years for that game to be published (you will read about that game in my next designer diary).

Meanwile, a design group was organized in my hometown and we also had a panel discussion. That’s where I met Vedran and we went together on the next SPIEL Essen. I didn’t know that he was planning to open a publishing house. Then I showed him my prototype for Choconnect and he liked it. In 2024, he opened the publishing house Snovid Games and it debuted at SPIEL Essen with three games: Galebari, To be continued.. and my game Choconnect.

So, how did I come up with Choconnect? I often play board games with my two kids. One day we played the game Labyrinth and it crossed my mind that that game has an interesting mechanic which is very rarely used. Usually, I start with the mechanics and then I add a suitable theme when I design my board games. I was thinking what to do with that mechanic from Labyrinth. So, I thought of something like Connect 4 but different so that you put tiles instead of chips on all sides of the board and then you slide it so that everything changes all the time which means that you need to think ahead. And that’s how the idea for Choconnect was born.

As the game is very abstract I needed to find a suitable theme and I though of my first time at SPIEL Essen and how I felt like a kid in a chocolate factory so a box of chocolates came to my mind. When I told my wife about that she happily approved since she’s a proper chocoholic.

Choconnect is an abstract tile laying/pushing game where you are in the role of a chocolatier and you want to arrange chocolates in the best possible way. In Choconnect, you draw randomly a tile from the cloth bag (there are three different types of tiles) and you put it on the board. But the twist is that you can put a tile only on the outer part of the board and if there is already a tile you slide that other tile but it cannot go over the board. You want to make a line of chocolate tiles of the same type either orthogonally or diagonally. It depends on the type of chocolates (three in a row for dark chocolate, four in a row for milk chocolate and five in a row for white chocolate). Whoever succeeds in creating the line first wins the game.

Maja Benčić made a great job with the illustrations and graphic design so you have to be careful not to confuse my board game with an actual box of chocolates. Thank you Maja.