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Immediately after that, before diving into the mechanisms of play, I wanted to give the game a good name. I really wanted something with the letter "K" in it – not necessarily at the beginning – and it had to be one word. I made a list of candidates by randomly mixing syllables that sounded "Caribbean" and Kalua was the best. I Googled the name to see whether it was taken or had a bad meaning and according to Wikipedia, "Kalua" in Hawaiian means "to cook in an underground oven", so that was perfect for me.
Inspiration for tropical games!
On the other hand, what usually happens during rough times? People will pray for help from their deity, and the tougher the situation, the more that people will pray. This idea developed into the concept of Praying Points (PP), which is the "money" of the game. Thus, a balance was created: the more your religion is punished by other players (or by yourself!), the more "money" you'll have to counterattack, but at the same time every attack will reduce your religion's Happiness, which could result in you losing followers to the happiest religion.
Obviously players will want to reward their own people – or to put it in game design terms, we need a mechanism to increase people's Happiness. That's how the Reward cards were created, giving players various advantages apart from the simple rise in Happiness.
Because the game has player elimination I wanted it to be fast, ideally playable in 30 minutes – 45 minutes tops – and increase the "re-match factor". I created the first prototype and took it to my Tuesday gaming night at the pub to see how long it would take to play.
The answer: too long.
One of the mechanisms in the design related to ending the game after a certain amount of "time" had elapsed, with disaster cards killing some of the followers, but this wasn't enough to speed things up, so two new rules were introduced:
-----1. Each local disaster kills one follower, which is removed from play and placed back into the box.
-----2. Global disasters make everyone lose as many followers as the total number of global disasters that have been played: one follower for the first global disaster, two for the second, and so on.
These changes initially worked fantastically, accelerating the end of the game almost in a spiral of death and destruction. However, after further testing, it was deemed too chaotic because if everybody played very aggressively, the game could end too soon.
A similar mechanism was needed. That is when we introduced the concept of protection. Global disasters do not cost any Praying Points to play, but they affect every player, including the one playing it. However, if that player pays 6 PP, he is protected from the effect of the card; furthermore, if he pays 12 PP, he can double the effect of the card, but he will receive no protection. This ability is very expensive, but could decide the game!
With these changes the play time was precisely on target! The game just needed a bit of tweaking...
In parallel to the design changes, I took the bold move of paying a professional artist, Gary Simpson, to create the artwork, even though the game was not fully finished. At the time I thought this was the right thing to do as I planned to self-publish the game, but I do NOT recommend doing this. In my case the move paid off in the end, but I was lucky. Always, always leave the artwork to the end of the process.
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Cover and cards from the prototype
I searched online for print-on-demand companies and got some quotes, in addition to pulling together all the paperwork required for a mini-stand at Spiel in Essen, Germany. The only thing I thought I was missing was a fair price for my product and a distributor to put it in the shops.
I consulted a friend of mine who owns an online board game shop to determine its discount from the retail price to figure out prices and potential profit, and she pointed me to a good friend of hers who knew a lot about this subject. She arranged for a virtual meeting, and some days later I was chatting online with this expert, Pol Cors. After hearing about my game, he asked me many questions and gave me very good advice. By the end of the conversation he revealed something I had been unaware of – he was the owner of Homo Ludicus and he asked me for the rules of my game. I was over the moon.
Some painful weeks passed and he finally told me that the rules were written awfully – a big piece of advice for all newbie game designers: write your rules beautifully and you are halfway there – but that the concept was solid. Before making any decision, he wanted to test the prototype. Things were moving in the right direction!
I passed him my prototype (functional, without artwork) and waited for what felt like the longest time ever. Finally, he came back to me and told me that his playtesting group had seen the potential but that a lot more testing was needed and several things had to change to make it commercial. He gave me a list and I agreed to all of them: How come I hadn't thought of all these things?
Several months of testing later, he came with big news: he had tested it with many randomly-chosen unrelated gamers and the vast majority of them loved the theme and liked how the game played. Moreover, he had an offer for me! I treasure that precise moment as one of the best moments in my life.
In the ramp up to Spiel 2011, time was coming fast and I was not hearing much from Pol. When I finally asked him about progress, he told me that there had been some issues (like so many other publishers had that year) and that unfortunately, we would not be making it in time for the fair. That was a devastating moment to me, but I still decided to go to Essen and demo the prototype to anyone interested. Luckily, we got a mini-expansion for Kalua produced in time for Spiel 2011, and I gave a copy to every person who came to demo the game. This is an exclusive promo that will never get reprinted. While we also gave copies away at Spiel 2012 to those who purchased the game – which was ready this time! –to make it fair to people who could not go to Essen, we will make this promo available at the BGG Store while stock lasts.
This was my second time in Essen, but the first one with a released game. What a journey!
Carlos Moreno Serrano
On display in the media room at Spiel 2012
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