Designer Diary: Behind the Throne

In the present day, new movies, comics, books, video and board games are constantly struggling for our free time. New products come out every day, and many of them are so extraordinary that you just can't miss them. In order to catch all that stuff, sometimes we want to play something fast with just a few components, but at the same time we want to get the same range of emotions and amusement from a larger, complex game. Of course, all designers have the dream of making a game with just a small amount of components and cards, but that has become particularly important recently. We, as designers, decided we wanted to take up the challenge of creating a "minimalist" game.

In fact, it happened that I created the basic concept of Behind the Throne during just one single evening. There is something archetypal and basic, yet fascinating, in the mechanisms of "pressing your luck". However simple at core, I like these games a lot. It is always interesting to me to try to assess risks in these games. It's funny when you find out that you scared yourself in vain or (vice versa) you were too self-confident. That's why I like the idea of number comparison, and the ability to predict the risk seemed interesting to me.

The next morning, I made the prototype and showed it to my co-author Oleg. He was just about to take a break after designing Pirates of the 7 Seas. As this game was pretty light, I convinced him that we would be able to finish it quickly — but of course everything was not as easy as I had thought it would be.

Monsters That Almost Got Main Roles

After several days of testing, when we had determined the basic properties of cards and their values, it was the right time to make a "true" prototype, with actual art and layout, partly because I perceive a game much better when it has at least some art, which helps players to memorize specific cards and so on, but also because we had decided to give the game to our friends to see their reaction.

The game is quite abstract and almost any theme would fit. It could be based around animals, robots, aliens or something else. I decided it would be nice to see on cards some funny monsters that help their lord to win. Their appearance should help the players guess their abilities.

I went online to search appropriate images, preferably with a consistent style, and I was delighted when I found a series of very original monsters, just like I needed. Each of them had its character; they were very skillfully drawn and made everyone smile. There was even a back illustration for the cards! However, I couldn't find the contact data of the creator! That is how the game almost became a game in which the main characters were funny monsters.

After that, I started looking for an artist. I wrote to several people we worked with earlier, but after a few sketches, we still had not found the right style. Those monsters I had found were so awesome that we couldn't create something we liked as much if we insisted upon sticking to this theme, so that's when we decided to change it.

Politicians and Their Games

Together with the talented Ukrainian artist Denis Martynets, who worked with us on Pirates of the 7 Seas, we started looking for a new theme. It so happened that my friend dropped in and started talking about politics, conspiracy, and corruption — and suddenly I realized that this theme fits the mechanisms perfectly, even better than monsters. This theme allows you to control different people with the different abilities useful to you, outbid them, and try to surround yourself with the most influential people.

Denis made a few sketches. We were looking for a medieval look. Although this topic is used a lot in games, it allows for very colorful characters. We also added a little bit of fantasy, and to make it less grim, we focused on the grotesque. Oleg and I both didn't like the first two sketches in terms of proportions and style. Denis was about to refuse this job, but I convinced him to try one more time, and with this third attempt I was amused and convinced this was just what we needed! The character looked great. By the way, this card is the "judge" card today.

Balance of Powers

We worked on the game's balance for quite a long time. It seems the game is pretty simple and everything is ready, but this is a game with just nine types of cards (and they must have certain numbers), so there were a limited number of elements we could tweak for tuning the entire balance. Every little detail has a huge influence on the gameplay. We had a large number of different versions of the game and balancing it all took a few months until we got the desired result. We finally decided on the abilities and how the game should finish in order to keep the intrigue until the very end.

For this I have to thank our colleagues from Ares Games. They were the first ones who believed in this game and helped us with the final version. They were very patient, in spite of the fact that balancing of the game delayed its finishing much longer than we planned. By the way, there were originally tokens in the game; you can see them in the pictures which appeared with the announcement of the game. We used them to indicate cards with invalid abilities, but the constant shifting and placing irritated us. And Oleg, after he returned from one exhibition, brought a great solution, the idea coming after explaining the game to one of the exhibition visitors who constantly forgot to add or remove tokens. That's when Oleg figured out how to help him. It was a simple but effective solution: just rotate the cards when their power cannot be used! Ever heard of it?

Behind the Throne

Finally, we had to choose the name of the game. We thought we had found the right one, which fit well all the various intrigues, different fights for the throne, and backroom conspiracy: "Gray Cardinal". The name is derived from true historical events and one famous individual whose activities made famous this well-known term.

But this idiomatic expression translates differently in different languages. For example, in English it sounds like "Behind the Throne". We wanted a name to be the same in most languages, so we decided to use this title because it expresses well the main point of the game: Players are influential people who can have different levels of impact on the same characters.

The Experience vs Luck Factor

Does luck have a great impact in this game? Of course, but it is not decisive. You have to be careful and take risks in this game. I can also give one piece of advice: Do not ignore card exchange in this game. It is actually a very powerful thing. And, of course, you may well instigate others against the leader. That's politics!

Awaiting Players' Reaction...

Behind the Throne has just released in English and will soon be in the hands of players in the U.S., Europe and China. Its premiere was in Poland, surprisingly, but that is where we premiered our Mysterium game as well, so it happened again that an Ukrainian game appears first in the hands of our good neighbors. It almost looks like a tradition!

I hope you will enjoy the game. We have put in so much effort. We would appreciate your feedback! We accepted the challenge of minimalism. If we coped with it or not, you will decide — now it is time for a new project!

Oleksandr Nevskiy