Designer Diary: The Making of Mondo

After many recent difficult productions, it's nice to have an easy one for a change – and that's what happened with my new board game Mondo, which will appear from Pegasus Spiele in German and Z-Man Games in English. After a movie wraps, the director does press tours praising the actors and vice versa. I'd like to take this opportunity to do the same, but not just to be polite.

This time the game started with a visual idea: an empty playing area that would be covered with matching tiles. This "key visual," as you say in advertising, is an image of the globe, which is depicted on the game board of each player. This defines where you can legally place your tiles, which means that the most important rules are already given to players from the start.

Game play takes place simultaneously, with everyone drawing from the same stock of landscape tiles. You earn positive points for animals collected and landscapes completed, while losing points for mistakes or an abundance of volcanoes.

Early and final versions of the player board

A timer determines how long you have to arrange and place the most valuable combination of tiles. Beginners have seven minutes available to them, and while that might sound like a lot, it's not. If you do manage to finish early though, you can score extra points while the other players continue until time runs out. The advanced and professional game settings, as well as multiple variants, provide increased thrills and a lot of variety. This last feature was already clear during development, namely that the game system is incredibly flexible. Elaborating on these possibilities was a central goal for me.
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