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There I was, sitting in a university classroom in the basement of the library, learning discrete mathematics while finishing a Computer Science degree. My teacher was drawing large circles on the dry-erase board, the circles overlapping one another. Yes, it was a Venn diagram; it kind of stuck with me.
At the time (and continuing to the present), game design was foremost on my mind, and this Venn diagram started to work around my head, molding an idea that would strike out on its own. Voilà! It hit me like a small branch while mowing the lawn under an apple tree – the entire diagram represented a prison, with guards in charge of each of the circles. Not doing well at naming designs in the blueprint stage, it became known as "My Very First Area Majority Game". Later the name changed to Lockdown! or Prison Break.
After creating a quick game board in a few minutes and stealing fifty meeples from Vikings and fifty dowels from my spare parts pile, I headed to the FLGS. I met up with a couple of regulars, planted the game in front of them with a shrug, and said, "Want to try my prison game?"
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The first mock-up game board
Of course they jumped out of their seats to provide me with a test and plenty of feedback. Well...maybe it didn't happen exactly like that. After an hour of talking about nothing – probably something about how to get Gilligan and crew off of their island – they sat down to the table with my makeshift prison.
Now, unbeknownst to me, I did not understand the connotations that came with a prison game. As the game progressed, I noticed a trend among the players to make everything more "realistic". Suddenly, my nice little prison break game had every innuendo thrown in to make it more along the lines of the Prison Break television show – not very family friendly and not what I was after. From shower room "problems" to my currency, transformed into a pack of cigs, everything was headed down a line I hadn't intended. Despite all the mischief and the crass jokes, though, the game was liked mechanically.
Fast-forward a few months: A game design competition came to my attention through connections with the Board Game Designers Guild of Utah (BGDG), with the competition to be held at SaltCON. Knowing that the clientele of SaltCON would be families and not salty sailors on shore leave, I decided to take a cue from all Euro board games – which are mainly abstracts with a theme thrown on – and take a little liberty to re-theme my prison break design to something more approving to me and the SaltCON judges.
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Lifeguard on Duty game board
Re-theme #1: Lifeguard on Duty. After about a week, I came up with a swimming pool with lifeguards in charge of the different areas in the pool. The cigarettes became candy bars that you would use to bribe the boss for the better places to make kudos with the manager...or something like that. Yes, the candy bar in the pool joke from, I think, Animal House was implemented into the theme on more than one occasion by the players; I plead the Fifth that I did not know about the joke before I changed the cigarettes to candy bars. After all, the dowels that were once cigarettes looked like candy bars or at least a Toostie roll.
Carey Grayson from FRED Distribution was judge at this event, and took me to the side to look over the game with me. (More on that later.) The game did well in the competition, but I think the theme was off-center compared to what one would consider for a board game...which led to re-theme number 2.
I took the game to a BGDG meeting once as Lockdown! to have it tested, and the next time I took it to BGDG, I got a bunch of feedback about the theme – according to them, lifeguards would not cut it. Suggestions for new themes included fishing, world population, space, gods, and a few others. I went to work on the re-theme.
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Re-theme #2: Galaxy Gods. As with most of my designs, I try for alliteration whenever possible: [thing=107669]Tribute and Taxes[/thing], Hog Haven (now The Hog Father Board Game), Damsels in Distress (now Fear of the Buccaneers), Food Fight! and Healthy Heart Hospital. With a minor change and nifty graphics, Galaxy Gods was born...at about the same time that Rio Grande Games published fellow BGDG member Mike Compton's Heavens of Olympus. Well, I decided against working that angle that was recently worked, so it was back to the drawing board. Yes, in this case, the theme is entirely pasted on, and I will admit it.
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Another intervening design
Re-theme #3: Penguin Panic. Enter Carey again. Through a few emails and some prodding, Carey convinces me to go with penguins who are trying to escape polar bears. Yes, we know they are not in the same continent, but the theme was pasted on, remember? He also liked the idea of calling it "The Great Icescape", making a nod towards the popular motorcycle-jumping movie The Great Escape.
Well, needless to say, this theme stuck. Of course my alliteration was included, making the final title Penguin Panic: The Great Icescape. (The cigarette packs used for currency became fish, in case you were wondering.)
Themes aside (finally), I pitched the game through the normal publisher channels to a few bites, tests, and returns. "Too abstract" was an often-mentioned phrase.
Enter nestorgames, a company which publishes abstracts! I emailed nestorgames about the game, but as it required cards to play, the design did not fit either of the two types of games nestorgames could deliver. I decided to try a few more of the big publishers. As anyone who has sent off a design to a publisher knows, it can take a long time to get your game back with a letter (if you're lucky) as to why it did not work for their line of games.
After a few more phrases along the lines of "too abstract for my line of games", I took a second look at nestorgames. At this time, Néstor simply told me to check out his competition on BGG. Cards were still something he could not do in any of his line's formats. I took a second look at whether cards did much for the game. They were random and added a little planning to the game, but since only five areas were available, not much planning was really done before your turn came around again. The cards numbered from 1-5. Hmm, a die has only one more side to it. Could I make my Venn bigger? After a few tries, I decided the six-circle Venn was not going to work with the current gameplay.
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Yet another version of the game – this one themed on collecting apples –
and a rough version of the penguin-packed design
After a little mulling around over ways to use the 6 on a d6, I decided to simply have it as a "dead" number. Voilà! Then I found out that the game included too much stuff for the current nestorgames formats. Fifty-plus fish tokens would not work. Adding a fish track to the game board turned out to be a simple fix. Affixing turn order tokens to the board was the next fix. The scoring mechanism was not going to work either, but an overhaul or two and it worked as well. Now the game was ready.
I checked with Néstor, and with the changes he said it would "most likely" work with the current formats. I entered the ongoing competition. Less than a week later, after a little prodding of fellow BGGers to look the game over and thumb it if they thought it was a good design, it had the thumbs needed to be "considered" for publishing.
The next six months crawled like a snail wherein I inquired monthly as to how the game was doing. Néstor has a lot on his plate and keeps loading it up with more, so needless to say his follow-ups answered me with "not yet" in a few words, more or less, but the game was still in the queue.
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As you can tell from the images above and below, though, the game has now been published! The graphic design and illustrations by Xavier Carrascosa are perfect and as light-hearted as they need to be; nestorgames did a great job! Thus, the wait eventually does pay off. I can't wait to take the game down to the FLGS with the players who loved the Lockdown! version with all their salty humor to see what they think. The game has had a few facelifts over the years, but the prison theme held out in the end – although I don't think the penguins will have any trouble in the showers or need to worry about getting a shiv in the back!
Scott Nelson
Final components and game board
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