How did this game come about? Let's turn the clock way back, all the way to 2004/2005 when I had three different game designs in progress that all used the same basic pieces: One game was about roller coaster parks, another about metropolitan development, and the third an economic bidding game. Funny thing, though, City Square Off was not one of those three games!
To create all of those shapes, I had used graph paper to design them, then cut them out. As best as I can remember, one afternoon I was working on the roller coaster game, in which players acquired various rides of different shapes and built them into a theme park with lakes and forests. I was working on the building rules and how players needed to maintain paths to various rides. While trying to determine the rules and the size of the board, the idea for City Square Off just hit me. I immediately made up a prototype and began to playtest the design, realizing quickly that I had come up with a very elegant tile-placement game.
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