Designer Diary: World Changers, or From Tropes to Treasured Historical Figures

[Editor's note: Korea Boardgames' Leon Scheuber has translated and submitted this designer diary on behalf of game author THEKI. —WEM]

World Changers, which I designed, is a card game for 1-4 players released by Korea Boardgames in 2021. This game has a very simple rule of repeatedly picking one card (or passing) while competing for the highest score of your acquired cards, but the interaction of the card effects can create unpredictable developments. The game is more complex than it looks at first.

World Changers is a game about gathering great historical persons from roughly four thousand years ago during the origins of civilizations to the present age and forming the best team to make humans prosper again on another planet. However, the game had a long eight-year history before it was completed. Here I will introduce this history.

In 2013, I used to have a lot of text chat conversations with my friends. At that time, I was thinking of simple games and ideas that could be played in a short time only via text chat. I was able to roll the dice on the text chat and make secret choices through a third party, but naturally it was not possible to prepare images like in Tabletop Simulator, to express the position or the front and back of the card, or to use a randomizer like a deck of cards. As a result, all the games we were playing were perfect information games and lacked replayability, but that was enough to entertain me and my friends.

One day, I was very interested in a rule that was included in a game brought in by a friend. In that game you generate the effect written on a card when you acquire the selected card, but if you acquire another card through the effect of the card, that second card's effect will not be activated. This rule prevents the interaction of cards from becoming too complicated, but it also means that you can ignore the disadvantageous effect of a card that might say something like "Instead of being powerful, a demerit effect occurs at the time of acquisition".

The next moment, various ideas came to my mind. I felt that this rule was even more widespread, and I was convinced that the game could be replayed and actually commercialized, so I decided to work on the redesign with the permission of my friend.

The cards that started it all

The most important thing I wanted to emphasize was the interaction. To achieve that I first decided on a card with a standard score. Having one "standard card" — the Citizen, 3 VP — with no effect made it easier for me to design and for players to estimate whether they can get three or more points in one turn. Next, I made a "powerful card" — the Spy, 5 VP — with a very high score, but with the side effect of giving one of the player's own cards to an opponent when the card was obtained.

I also created a "mediator" card — the Dancer, -1 VP — with the great effect of getting an additional card from the display when acquiring it. If you pass the "standard card" to an opponent due to the effect of the "powerful card", your opponent's score cannot improve by more than three points. However, if you get the "powerful card" with the effect of the "mediator" card, the effect of the "powerful card" will not be triggered according to the game rules. (The effect of a card obtained by an effect of an other card will not be activated.) This means you don't need to give away one of your own cards to an opponent and therefore are able to get more than three points. Or if you pass the "mediator" card to an opponent due to the effect of the "powerful card", you get rid of the negative point of the former and obtain the high score of the latter.

To possibly protect you from the effect of the "powerful card", I created a "guard" — the Bouncer, 4 VP — which has no effect when acquired, but which keeps others from giving you cards via the effect of other cards, such as the negative cards you may receive from your opponent as in the above example.

In this way, I designed the cards to connect the interactions. I ended up making 32 cards, but most of them were designed to have positive or negative interactions with at least six or more cards. In this game, six cards are randomly selected for use for each player, and as a result, I succeeded in creating a game with an unpredictable extent but simple general rules.

Draftwerk as it was sold at Tokyo Game Market

In 2014, I released a game called Draftwerk at the Tokyo Game Market. I was able to sell more than 250 sets at two Game Market conventions and through consignment sales to board game shops in Japan. This was the prototype of today's World Changers.

In early 2020, I received an email from Leon of Korea Boardgames to republish the game. The most significant change is the presentation. The game was created under the guidance of mechanisms, so I couldn't come up with a presentation that I was happy with. Draftwerk had 32 unique cards of professional categories that you often see in the fantasy world, but I was dissatisfied with the fact that players would not understand why they are collecting these people. However, given the great idea of "gathering historical greats to form the best team", Leon dug deeper into this backstory and suggested the name "World Changers". I was interested in great historical figures because of the influence of Civilization, so I enjoyed working on World Changers.

Many other improvements from Draftwerk, such as redesigning cards, changing rules, adding solo rules, etc., make World Changers a very nice game. As for the components, as a result of Leon's efforts, a history booklet containing explanations of the great personalities is included, as well as beautiful new artwork and chips to improve playability. By all means, I would like you to read this booklet and play the game while imagining the scenes where great people from various eras are all involved.

THEKI