Chris Backe

I got in touch with Chris Backe last year in October, when Dragon vs. Kingdom was launched. I got the amazing opportunity to playtest the game beforehand, and furthermore, I really enjoyed our conversations about games. Let’s get to know Chris’ journey in creating games!

What inspired you to start designing games, and how did your journey begin?

I’ve always been the creative sort – in fact, I made my first game when I was around 12 years old. It was called Armies and Legions, made with a hand-drawn grid on cardboard and some pony beads from my mom’s crafting supplies. Each bead was an army that could move one space, and when your group of armies was adjacent to an opponent’s army, you rolled one die per army in the battle.

I didn’t realize it at the time, of course, but I had basically created Risk.

I began taking game design more seriously in 2016, courtesy of Wil Wheaton’s Tabletop series. It was my introduction to modern board games, presented through a fun series of videos, that both taught the games and made them sound like a lot of fun. I was in Florida at the time, and I started taking my first real game called Meandering Minions to a friendly local game store. Some kind playtesters gave it a go, had some feedback, and I mentioned that if they’ll be back next week, I’ll have a new version to test. They came back, and I came back, and the rest is history.

Can you share the biggest challenge you faced while designing your first game and how you overcame it?

I had no idea what I was doing! There’s so much to learn, and I had no idea who to connect with, where to learn it… Today, of course, there’s plenty of designers that keep blogs, make videos, and lots of Facebook groups, but back in 2016 I didn’t really know where to turn. I eventually found some resources, wrote my own blog posts about game design that aimed to answer the sort of questions I had, connected with other game designers, and so on.

What's your design process when creating a new game?

New games start from any of the following:

A theme idea
A mechanic idea
A component hook
An experience hook

Most of the time, it’s a ‘what if…?’ sort of question or a combination of two concepts.

I’m both blessed and cursed with a ton of ideas… Most of the time, an idea needs to cook a bit more or be combined with something else to become a concept (the precursor to a game). When I have an idea, it’ll usually go into one of two big Google Docs: one titled ‘Mechanics with no Theme’ or ‘Themes with no Mechanics’. If I’m pretty sure a specific mechanic and theme will work well together, I’ll start a new Google Doc with those, then bookmark it.

Are there any upcoming projects or games you're excited about?

As part of No Box Games, we’ll be releasing Stake Your Claim – an area control game that uses dice to indicate where you can go. We’ll also be releasing a special holiday game that will involve folding paper, but that’s all I can say about that right now…!

Stake Your Claim’s in art right now, so nothing to show on that game… but it’ll be done by Parker Simpson, who had his hand on Dragon vs. Kingdom, which I absolutely loved his art choices of!

I’ve had a few signed games announced, but not sure when they’ll be coming out. One that I’m really proud of is called Gunpowder, Treason and Plot by Blackletter Games. It’s a real-time, turn-based social deduction game where some of you are Plotters trying to blow up Parliament, while a few of you are Agents of the Crown trying to protect it. It’s a tense, 10-15 minute game with lots to headspace to play with…!

What advice would you give to aspiring game designers, especially those interested in print-and-play games?

Print-and-play games are a great place to get your feet wet. They’ll necessarily be easy to make, quick to iterate, and won’t involve a ton of special components. This limits your design space in a good way – a lot of newer designers want to pack a ton of different mechanics into one game, which makes them more complex very quickly.

With that said, don’t force your game to become a print-and-play game. The right form for your game might be a card game, a bigger game with a board, or a print-and-play game. Let your game speak to you – sometimes it’ll whisper things like ‘you know, if you added a set of cards, it’ll create a new layer of interesting decisions…’ or somesuch.

Make games you want to play – statistically speaking, you’ll be playing it more than almost anyone else for a long time. It’ll help keep your enthusiasm up as you’re working with graphic designers, making your crowdfunding page, working with reviewers, and so on.

Tasliman

Tasliman is a board game developer based in Bangladesh, with the dream of exploring the world of games and introducing it to anyone new to it. He is the founder of Kraftz, a brand that develops board games commercially, as well as with reputed entities like BRAC and The Gates Foundation.