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Let me begin by saying that Foggy Island is my first game as a designer. A few dozen times I have tested prototypes, sold games, recorded game reviews, and organized conventions, but the emotions behind those activities are way different from the ones you experience when creating something new.
The basic idea was simple: While working with children and youth, I often make up games for them to play, and the easiest way to do this is to offer them something with which they are already experienced. Foggy Island is a game that uses your previous experience of playing Tic-Tac-Toe.
But the algorithm of this game is so well known, why drag it up?
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I couldn't help it; I went on. The first idea was to expand the gaming field. Playing on a 6x6 grid was far more unpredictable. The algorithm grew like a snowball, and it became impossible to put it out as a single scheme. Moreover, adding more spaces opened lots of new possibilities for players. I am sure, however, that many people have played this version, or even on a larger grid, on their own. But what if the goal is different? What if your aim were not to put three in a row, but to fill in the whole field? What if long lines were more valuable than short ones? Well, this requires an absolutely new approach. All your previous gaming experience is irrelevant for you have to change your strategy completely.
The mechanisms worked perfectly, and players found it easy to get into the new game as it took almost no time to explain the rules: "Have you ever played Tic-Tac-Toe? Do you know how to build three in a row? It's something like that, but...."
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At this point, I became adamant about developing this game — and to develop it so that it may be of use not only to me but for other people as well. But the roll-and-write mechanism is not my cup of tea, and back then it was not that popular. I decided that we will use tokens, some of which would be more valuable, thus increasing the interest. By "more valuable", I mean they would have unique kinds of features. Tokens that double the score were obvious, but spies turned out to be a real treasure. These tokens count for your opponent's score, and you must play them, although depending on the position they may become even useful for current play.
At this point, our idea started transforming into the game and product. I started posting hints, designs, and ideas on the Kozak Games Facebook page to show the process of making the game step by step.
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By then, testing had already spread outside our workshop. At least a dozen activists, clubs, and bloggers were interested, and it was an incredibly strange feeling to understand that now total strangers will try out your creation. What if they dislike it? What if they fail to experience all the profundity of your game? What if they don't get the rules? Or don't like the setting?
In the end, due to this testing, we met and got acquainted with our painter Nazar Ponik and Ukrainian publisher Taka Maka Games.
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While presenting a prototype at a convention, I met a very interesting group of people. We talked a lot about the mechanisms, about what these people would have added or changed, and everyone had completely different ideas of how this game may evolve. We tried experimenting with the board, adding players, changing characters abilities, and going blind.
Then I came up with the idea of making the game as a kind of "game constructor", something in which you can easily change the rules, add something, or omit something. The game-constructor idea allows other players to construct a new game. That's how weather cards, which set the rules for the current round, were added. They determine whether we play on the whole field right away or open it quarter by quarter, whether we play with open tokens or play blind.
I turned on the heat with my idea of a game that can be constantly improved, a game in which the rules can be modified or added to, a game in which you can add new tokens. But how to proceed? If you were joining this project, what would you add as an expansion or as promo cards or tokens?
Roman Zadorozhnyy
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