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A few months ago, I saw a documentary about ninjas that included an interview with the last living real ninjutsu teacher. The movie offered a lot of previously unknown insights of the movement that started in the hidden province of Iga and created popular Japanese heroes such as Hattori Hanzo and Ishikawa Goemon. That fascinating story proved for me the decisions we made when developing Call To Glory.
"Follow the day and reach for the sun."
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"Don't fight if you don't know what you're fighting about."
Crazy Chicken became the first title in Ravensburger's new two-player-game series. Unfortunately the product line was abandonded in the same year it started due to strategical decisions. Over the following two years were frequent discussions about taking the design into the regular portfolio as a multiplayer game, but that never happened.
"Do or do not; there is no try."
In 2005, the game was rereleased as Drive in the U.S. with a small game board. This was followed in 2010 by Crazy Chicken again, with the original illustrations used in an iOS App (which my wife loves to play :-)) that was developed by a start-up software team while I started to look for a publisher for the "analog" game.
First sketches of the Call to Glory cards
"Pain is a strength, not a weakness."
When I met Jonny de Vries from White Goblin Games at the "Internationale Spieletage" (a.k.a., Spiel) in Essen, he was very enthusiastic about the design and agreed to release the game with the new multiplayer rules, with a minimum of three cards now needed to play the numbers 12, 14 and 16. (A small difference that makes a big effect.) The design, which would appear in its metal box card game series, should also have a different theme. What might that be?
"Freedom is not free."
The theme was a suggestion from the publisher and fits perfectly with a game system in which you kick out the sets of others and try to get enough sets yourself to be victorious. The artwork is done by Drew Baker and is very impressive; it would make a really nice series of posters for the living room.
"Never bite off more than you can chew."
A layout of the
ninja figures
Finally, we worked an unusually long time on the quite short rule booklet just to have a perfect result.
So the last chapter of the story is kind of a deluxe happy ending for one of my strongest games under the headline Call To Glory.
Michael Schacht
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