Designer Diary: Ali Baba, or When the Sealed Cave Magically Opens

It All Starts with an Idea…

We are Martino Chiacchiera and Remo Conzadori, two Italian game designers who met nine years ago on Inventori di Giochi.it, an Italian game designer website created by Paolo Mori. We have both designed various games released from many companies around the world (with many others on the way), and since we live in different cities, we developed this game mostly talking through the PC.

Since the dawning of our collaboration, we have had a habit of throwing ideas at one another via mail and hoping a worthy project would eventually show up. One morning Remo wrote the following message on our chat: "I would modernize online mahjong. It's simple and works well for SdJ

"

The idea was to make a game resembling mahjong in which players take turns picking up things from the table, following some constraints imposed by the position of the elements on the board. We both agreed on what the goal of the game was going to be: a simple set collection. We then started brainstorming, and finally Martino came up with this structure, which has remained the same since the beginning.

A shared game board in which you take tiles on the top, after which tiles below become available

…Which Excites and Inspires New Ideas…

The first issue was about how much information players should have. Should all the tiles be face down? And if so, should they show partial information on the back? Or maybe all the tiles should be face up?

A middle ground was the solution. After some testing, we decided that all the tiles should start face down, with each tile being revealed as soon as no other tile on top of it. This eliminated an excess of information (and the risk of analysis paralysis), but still provided enough choices for our target audience (family game). (This rule resembles the way you unlock and reveal new cards in 7 Wonders Duel, which hadn't been released at that time.)

At the same time, in order to inspire us in the development of the rules, we also discussed the setting. The first proposal was an iceberg from which to pick up pieces, perhaps with Inuit and typical Greenland resources, but immediately we opted for a giant ziggurat and a more archaeological theme. In the end, we came up with Atlantis and the plundering of its riches; that's the theme we submitted to White Goblin Games along with our prototype.

From the North Pole to South America, then deep down in the Ocean

…But Ideas Are Just a Multiplier of Execution

This took the longest part of the game development. What do players do with the tiles they take? It was clear to us that they had to combine the tiles with one another to create a reason for the players' choices. The first step was to divide the tiles into shapes and colors that could be grouped into sets to score points.

In order to move quickly, the first prototypes were very ugly!

This division by color and shape suggested that we could add constraints based on the characteristics of the tiles. At first, the colors imposed a limit on the players, with them being forced to take a different color tile from the last one they took. This restriction wasn't much fun, though, and we figured out a solution only after the next steps...

We iterated the game a lot, implementing many different rules. As an example, one day we added this stupid rule: "You cannot look at the tiles you have already taken. If you collect identical tiles, you'll score negative points for them at the end of the game." Suddenly there was a memory aspect and negative scoring for being forgetful. The rule worked fine but wasn't fun and definitely wasn't what we were trying to achieve. We rapidly removed this limitation to experiment with other possibilities.

After spending a lot of time and effort, we came up with the easiest rule ever: "No restrictions at all. Take whatever face-up tile you want." Sometimes less is more!

How do players score points? Somewhere along the line, we tried to use the tiles to form poker sets, and these sets would eventually score points depending on the sets created by the opponents; we tested this and many other variations of this idea. Short story: They didn't work.

In retrospect, the final solution was simple. Players would score points at the end of the game for collecting sets of tiles with the same image — which is a simple and linear goal.

However, each tile has not only a shape (relic), but also a color! Each time you take a tile, its color makes you perform a special effect! Here was the twist we were looking for!

The last part of the development was focused on finding the right special effects, balancing them, and keeping them simple. It's hard to make things smooth, and we put a lot of effort into removing oddities and exceptions.

For an idea of how the game design process works, I'll note that within the first twenty emails and a few chat sessions, we had almost 90% of the game. To fix things and to balance the special effects, we needed another one hundred emails, phone calls, chats, many hours running large groups of playtesting, etc. This is to say that having a good idea is relatively easy, while making it a presentable prototype requires work, commitment, and experience.

The Value of an Idea Lies in How You Use It

The game was completed two months before SPIEL '17; during its development, many publishers had tried the game and were interested in the project. Thus, instead of waiting and presenting the game at the fair, we decided to start submitting the game to a publisher. We had different options and offerings; after some personal evaluations, we decided to contact White Goblin Games first. They responded immediately, and in a few weeks they confirmed they were going to produce the game! This process was faster than usual; the main reason is probably that, to our great pleasure, the game was convincing in its entirety and no major changes or heavy development were required.

We would like to thank Jonny, Jeroen, and their crew at WGG; the illustrator Denis Martynets who did a wonderful job; and all our patient playtesters! We hope you'll enjoy playing Ali Baba!