by Marco Canetta

A long time ago in a galaxy on a beach far, far away….

Actually, the beach was in Tuscany, not that far from our home, at least. It was 2010 – long enough ago that many details have faded from memory.

Stefania(Niccolini) and I had recently published African Park; we were working on The Doge Ship and Rhein River Trade; and, above all, we were brimming with enthusiasm, which had spread to the whole family. It all started when our son, during that year’s summer vacation, said to me, “Papino (more or less “Daddy” in English), why don’t you make a game about your job?”

At the time, I was working as a consultant for major mobile phone operators: base radio stations, antennas transmission patterns and gains, dBi and dBd, and electromagnetic fields were my daily bread. The idea of creating a network, with constraints on power, antenna orientation, and interference with other networks, was quite appealing. That day, instead of building sandcastles, Stefania, our son, and I started drawing hexagons on the beach (hexagons were used at that time for representing mobile phone network over maps – perfectly fitting also for a game).

It didn’t take long to come up with some initial drafts: a map on which to create the network and various radiation patterns. The patterns consisted of 1, 2, or 3 cubes placed on hexagons, representing the signal intensity, which, when moving away from the antenna, naturally decreased.

The first draft was purely economic: I spend money to build the network, and I earn money based on the locations reached by my signal. An interesting optimization, but not an easy one.

Between 2010 and 2012, while we were completing our other ongoing projects, we continued to develop these ideas. To create a variety of strategies, cards like these have been introduced.

And the map looked like this.

Some “workers” were moving around on the map, identifying the locations (i.e., the hexagons) where the base radio station would be installed and from which it would then spread the signal.

It’s Not Time To Make a Change…

Putting aside a prototype for a while might help you see it in a new light and spot its flaws and its potential areas for improvement. The long break due to the development of ZhanGuo allowed us to return to the game later with fresh ideas.

To offer more variety, the map became modular, with modules like this one.

(Personal note: the modularity is always great. However, cutting hexagons is somehow annoying).
In addition to the cards, which still were driving the actions in the game, patents had also been introduced, providing permanent improvements to actions.

In short, all the elements were in place, but another long break was looming on the horizon…

Video Railroad Killed the Radio Star (?)

Working on Railroad Revolution – a game that had something to do with building a network – brought the project to a halt once again. The subsequent expansion of Railroad Revolution, Railroad Evolution and other projects that had taken shape in the meantime left the Wireless prototype gathering dust on a shelf.

There was a bit of a scare with the release of Smartphone Inc., a great game that – fortunately – had a different game flow and, in some ways, a different theme. All in all, that game was not “interfering” with our project. The real interfering factor was the time. We were aware that the rapid evolution of the board gaming world would render the prototype outdated and that, if ever revived after years, the project would require complete rework.

A New Hope

Winter 2023. A quiet period. COVID has been left behind, the development of Zhanguo: The First Empire was at the end, the prototype of Kingdom Crossing was already satisfying: a good time for new ideas. Personally, I’ve always been fascinated by the colorful cards of Ticket to Ride, and I was wondering what a game might be like that used colorful cards for more complex actions (sorry, we often tend toward complexity…).

Ok, but what should I do in this game? Certainly not a railroad network, I thought.

Why not revisit some concepts from Wireless, in a totally new form and with a totally new gameplay? And in a short time, here come some dual-purpose cards…

…and a fairly detailed playerboard with a summary of the available actions.

The basic idea was: if I play several cards, I have access to stronger actions.

(Fun fact: The playerboard in the example belongs to the yellow player and features an image of Nikola Tesla. By pure coincidence, since this version of the game never left our house, the final version designed by Harald Lieske also features the same combination Tesla + yellow).

The “network” would be created by placing tokens on a modular map like this one. The number on the hexagon represented the difficulties in installing a base station there.

Rather than introducing different types of resources (both abstract and concrete, such as knowledge and experience, physicals antennas, supports and infrastructures for antennas, electrical and electronic equipment, energy, technicians, and collaborators…), we decided to condense everything into simple cards, which could eventually be combined with money.

As far as I recall, we played only a very few turns of that prototype. The generic map wasn’t helpful (too generic) and didn’t provide any direction.
We soon put together a map focused primarily on the locations (i.e. Europe and U.S.) where Marconi, Tesla, and other scientists began their research and experiments.

(I admit, we created the map by borrowing map fragments from a game I like a lot).

And the cards evolved accordingly…

I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For

However, there was something about the card mechanics that didn’t quite convince us. Or, at the very least, that didn’t quite satisfy us.

The idea came to us while playing around with some $ tiles from Railroad Revolution.

What would happen if the coloured cards became simple coloured tiles, maybe in the same size of the banknote above, and if having more or fewer of them affected the cost of the action? And what if I compensated for the missing tiles with $? And, to prevent the game engine from “exploding,” how would it feel if every action taken weakened the next one? And finally, what would the game be like if I could use money as a wild card or as a filler to make up for any shortcomings?

The answers ended up on an oversized game board like this one.

Finally, the game was heading in the direction we wanted. In short, in addition to the action tiles (which temporarily had flags on the back)…

… other tiles were added that simply “filled” the spaces – the Tycoons.

The development of the playerboard and the map was quite complex and went through numerous versions, released between 2023 and 2024, again with (albeit useful) breaks related to the completion of Kingdom Crossing.

The signal tokens had also found their place and their role on the playerboard.

Finally, the Personal targets had arrived as well – especially useful in the early games (when in doubt, I’ll just grab the flags…).

All the pieces were now in place…

SPIEL Essen 2024

A game with this complexity and these dimensions certainly isn’t right for every publisher. And time at the trade show is limited. So, we had to choose our meetings carefully. By chance, Bier Pioniere caught our attention and therefore we wrote to Spielefaible. We had a cordial meeting, during which we found many points on which we were in complete agreement. And a few months later, our journey together began.

And with Spielefaible came the final major revolution: turning hexagons into rectangles meant redesigning almost the entire game. Transmission patterns, patents, objectives… A lot of game parts were affected by this change. But this change was a bold finishing touch.
We went from this:

… to this:

SPIEL Essen 2026

SPIEL Essen 2026 will be the final destination of this long journey I tried to resume here. And, even if I often used the term “I” throughout this diary, this has been a journey we took together, not only with Stefania, but also with our daughter and our son, who are not only our main playtesters but also precious help. For example, in contrast with our prototypes, rather essential, we had a nice cover image made by our daughter.

Now, all we have to do is wait a little longer to finally see the game on a (XL) table. Our son and our daughter, who are grown up now, will obviously be in Essen too.

“Papino, why don’t you make a game about your job?”
Done!