by Magnus Karlsson

Hi there, welcome to this designer diary for The Plank. I hope you enjoy it!

My name: Magnus Karlsson

I live in: Vikingstad, a small village in eastern Sweden, with my wife Frida, two teenagers, and two cats

My Age: Getting close to fifty

Short bio: I have designed games in some form for most of my life and on a little more frequent basis the last ten years. I got my first game, Zoomies, released in 2024 with Fireside Games. In the second half of 2025, Fractal Juegos released a geography puzzle game that Erik Andersson Sundén and I have designed: Where is that?

Design philosophy: Create games with easy rules that have fun and interesting decisions! Uptime beats downtime, every time.

Enough about me — let us focus on The Plank.

I have played hobby board games since 2010-ish, not focusing on a specific type or genre, more happy to try out games. It might be the designer in me that finds the actual design more interesting than the game sometimes — but throughout all the years, I have enjoyed the game Heckmeck am Bratwurmeck, a.k.a. Pickomino. It is a push-your-luck dice game in which the rules can be taught while playing. You can easily adjust the number of players during the game, so it is perfect for parties and gatherings where people come and go.

Overview shot of Pickomino

In February 2022, I set out on a mission to create my own dice game with these criteria:

• Each turn should progress the game towards the end.

• You should aim for different numbers so that higher isn’t always good.

February in Sweden is winter with a good chance of snow, so the game became “Snowroller”, with players building a snowman. Every player had their own scoring sheet with five snowballs.

Each turn, you rolled five d6 with two free re-rolls (hello, Yahtzee…), and your mission was to sum all dice to determine the size of a snowball for your snowman. Each snowball had to be smaller than the previous one, so you wanted to roll as high as possible, but not exceed your previous snowball. If you failed to roll lower, you had to halve your previous snowball score.

When everyone has created five snowballs, you compare the smallest one, and the highest number won. The optimal “score” would be to roll 29, 28, 27, 26, 25.

The design worked, but was quite boring and luck-based; even with a couple of re-rolls, you had few interesting decisions.

First iteration of the player board/score pad

For my next iteration, I put all players on the same board, with them moving meeples to indicate their “last” snowball, then being forced to move it to a lower position each time.

This design worked better as there was a more visible interaction, and the length of the game was variable since the game ended with the last player standing. I noticed that the game had a dull period in the beginning, so I decided to cut one die.

Next iteration of the game board

To spice things up, I replaced the 6s on the dice with symbols. The sun caused all other players to move closer to the end. Carrots could be saved and used for re-rolls later in the game. Scarves could also be saved and protect you from other players rolling the sun.

Introducing the symbols together with only four dice turned the math into a nice 0-20 range, allowing younger players to count for themselves.

Snowrolled dice symbols

A week later, I discussed the theme of the game with my designer friends, and someone thought of pirates on a plank. This felt much better and more suitable for the mechanisms.

I created a rough prototype with a plank and sharks. At the same time, I began testing a small fix for the bad roll problem, which always raised the question of whether to round up or down when halving numbers. Instead of halving, each space has a symbol; if you roll equal to or more than your current position, you will jump to the next symbol of the same type. That way, you had a few chances to save yourself, although when you reached the end of the plank (spaces 1-6), you would fail.

The project name changed from “Snowroller” to “Walk The Plank”.

The first pirate plank board

For the dice, I kept using four d6. The sun was replaced by a sword, pushing all other pirates one step. The carrot became a coin that can be used for additional re-rolls. The scarf function was dropped to simplify the rules.

Pirate-themed dice symbols

During the spring and summer months of 2022, I visited several conventions and playtesting events. The response was great, and the game worked well for both gamers and families. It took a few minutes to explain the rules and fifteen minutes to play, and every game had a couple of wow moments, rolling some specific number or pushing your fellow pirates to the sharks.

The game felt ready for pitching, so I started to hunt for pitch meetings for SPIEL Essen 22.

The plank prototype — tight endgame!

I pitched the game to quite a few publishers; several liked the idea but didn’t see the fit for their catalog or current timeline. AMIGO Spiel really liked it and started to test the game. Through the next months, we had some good discussions and two new rules were added:

• When you move your pirate, if the space you land on is occupied, you will push those pirates one step forward. This made the spaces more interesting since you could aim to push the other pirates.

• You can use a coin to ignore a die OR a re-roll. This way, the endgame got way more interesting and allowed for different tactics when you rolled your dice.

Unfortunately, AMIGO passed on the game at a late stage, but I was happy to have come that far and improved the game a few more notches. I tried to pitch the game further to other publishers, but it didn’t stick anywhere, so the question was whether the game was good enough to continue pitching or needed an overhaul.

At SPIEL Essen 22, we were out of Covid, but you still had to wear a mask

At LinCon in May 2023, I talked with Albin, who runs Game Prototyper, a local Swedish shop for creating prototypes and small print-run games. He had seen the game before, liked it, and was interested in producing and publishing it. I felt that it was interesting to try out a different path, working closely with a local producer and publisher. In July 2023, we signed a contract and started our journey bringing this design to the world.

My original name, “Walk the Plank”, was already taken by a similarly themed game, so we decided on the shorter term, The Plank.

Great people at Game Prototyper

Albin found a good illustrator, Marco Aurélio from Brazil, who created nice art, taking my rough prototypes into something really beautiful. Albin himself did most of the graphics design putting it all together.

Albin wanted to create some 3D effect for the game, making the plank float above the shark-filled water. I agree that this creates a much cooler impression of the game, although it does add complexity to the production. This might not be a problem if you use the experienced board game manufacturers out there, but with a limited budget and the intention of producing everything in Sweden, it’s a different story.

Albin has a lot of experience in building prototypes, as well as machinery available in his shop, so he went for it — and I am super happy that he did because it takes the game to another dimension…

Floating plank, with tentacles holding it in position

The “final” rule change came in 2024. Now and then, playtesters commented that they felt it was bad to start, that player order really mattered. Yes, there is a small bias because if you get in front of the others, you can’t affect them except with the sword. The randomness of rolling the dice usually outweighs this, but it felt like something could be done to improve the situation.

We started to test the easiest solutions, like giving fewer/more coins at the start, but this didn’t feel right. We also tested the idea of allowing coins to block swords, but this change made it more complex to resolve swords since every player had to decide whether they wanted to use their coins to block the sword.

Finally, we decided that after your turn, if you are closest to the end, you get a coin. That way, we mitigated bad luck and turn order in one stroke — while also adding a little bonus that might make it worth jumping to last place.

Adding the catch-up coin improved the experience at the end of the game

LinCon May 2025 was the official release of The Plank. We sold out almost instantly, and yes, that might have something to do with us managing to prepare only five copies for the convention, but after that the game has kept selling.

During the summer, we have spent time marketing the game and supplying it to game shops here in Sweden. The next step will be to see whether we can find a partner that would be interested in taking the game to new markets.

The back of the box from the first print run

So, did I meet my design goals?

Each turn should progress the game towards the end

There is only one way to stand still on your turn: roll all symbols or use coins to ignore the dice. In that case, however, there is a great chance that you rolled one or more swords, which means you will move your opponents. Thus, 99% of all turns will make progress.

You should aim for different numbers so that higher isn’t always good

At the start of the game, you want to roll high, but the further you advance down the plank, you need to roll lower and lower. What’s more, after every throw you need to decide whether you want to keep the symbols or try to roll a better number.

It has been great to work with Albin, and being close to the actual production gives me valuable insights for the future. Producing board games in Sweden might not be cost effective in the long run, but it is nice to be able to say “Made in Sweden”, and the ability to produce games on demand lowers the risk that we’ll be stuck with a huge number of games in storage.

Thank you for your time, and I hope this story brought you joy!

Me in front of a banner for The Plank