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Designer Diary: Crazy Creatures of Dr. Doom/Gloom

Designer Diary: Crazy Creatures of Dr. Doom/Gloom
Board Game: Crazy Creatures of Dr. Gloom
I can't recall how many times I've made game prototypes with a Roman theme that transformed into something different by the time they finally appeared in print, the most recent example being the amusement park game Coney Island. The same has held true for monster-themed prototypes, too – but I had a real breakthrough in 2011 when a children's game prototype titled "Monster Monster" was released in the U.S. under the name My Monster.

What's even better is that 2012 has brought about the release of Crazy Creatures of Dr. Doom from White Goblin Games in Europe (to be released in the U.S. as Crazy Creatures of Dr. Gloom from Stronghold Games), but the prototype for that game didn't have a monster theme at all!

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Joking aside, in Crazy Creatures Doctor Gloom tries to create the wackiest creatures ever seen, and you, the player, assist in doing this through the basic game mechanism of getting rid of creature cards in your hand. The classic way of doing this in games is to play a higher card from your hand than the previously played card, and the starting idea for this game's development was the ability for a player to change the direction of play (from "high on low" to "low on high" and back) under specific circumstances. In the original prototype, this was visualized by simple plus and minus symbols; now we have a machine that enlarges or scales down the creatures. If you play a card of the same number as the one last played, something always allowed, subsequent cards have to be played downwards.

At that point the publisher brought in the idea of alternatively giving other players a card as a "gift".

In the end, the overall gameplay is about playing creature cards from your hand, changing the order of the cards to be played in order to get rid of specific cards, and blocking others from playing their cards. After playing a number of games equal to the number of players, the player with the fewest minus points wins.

That's roughly about it. Since the game has just a few rules, the development work with the publisher and the illustrator wasn't long. The main work was finding a good fitting and nice theme as well as a name to match. The illustrator, Dennis Lohausen, wanted to add kind of a steampunk style. The artwork is nice, especially the rule booklet, which includes a lot of small sketches with pseudo-scientific text, giving the ruleset an atmospheric look.

Michael Schacht

While out in Europe, Crazy Creatures of Dr. Gloom is available via preorder from Stronghold Games with delivery anticipated in August 2012.

Board Game: Crazy Creatures of Dr. Gloom

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