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The happy designer in 2010 with
then-new games Aether and Arvuutin
then-new games Aether and Arvuutin
Touko Tahkokallio: While the scene is not huge here, I think it is relatively strong and there are many interesting conventions arranged in Finland. There are also many active board game clubs around the country. A lot of this activity is due to the Finnish Board Game Society and its active members. Also, there has been some activity towards game designing for some time now, and I hope we will see more published games from Finnish designers in the future.
So overall, while the board games are not as visible in Finland as they are in Germany, for example, I think the situation is relatively good when compared to some other neighboring countries. We have few companies that bring modern quality games to the reach of ordinary consumers. Some of these new generation games can be even found on the shelves of the bigger markets.
PS: How did your adventure with board games start, and when did it transform to include game designing?
TT: Well, I have been playing all sorts of games since my childhood (RPGs, computer games, board games, etc.), but I found modern boardgaming in early 2000 after discovering The Settlers of Catan. For a long time, we just played that game with my friends. It had a huge impact on me and for the first time I realized that board games could be something very different than what I was used to. At some point we moved to Puerto Rico and I found my board game collection slowly growing. I just checked and saw that I created my BoardGameGeek account in February 2005, so I guess that's the point when my hobby got more serious!
At some level I started thinking of designing games pretty much immediately after playing my first game of Settlers. The possibilities seemed endless to me – and they still do. But at first, game designing was just something quite occasional. However, the time I used to work on my games gradually grew and at some point it become a bit more serious hobby for me.
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TT: It really depends on the game. For example, Politix was developed roughly in a year, I think – but of course it was very much a hobby then. Basically game design can take anything between a few weeks and a few years.
PS:Your first three games were published by yourself and two others as Onni Games. What made you to start this company?
TT: It all started with Politix, which is a bit of a silly card game about Finnish politics. First, there weren't that many possibilities of finding a publisher for this kind of a niche game. Second, I had two friends – Jussi Kurki and Ossi Lehtinen – who were interested in game publishing, so we decided to found Onni Games and we worked jointly to get the games out. Jussi made the illustrations and Ossi did the graphical design, among other things.
After our first game came out, it was natural to do some others. The following year in 2010, we published Aether and Arvuutin, with the latter only in Finland. But as there's a lot of work on the publishing side and the risks are quite big, at least for now I think I will mainly work as a freelance designer.
PS: Are you now a full-time designer, and if not, what do you do for a living and how much time do you devote to designing?
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PS: When did you visit Spiel, the annual game convention in Essen Germany for the first time? Was it with your next game Aether? This game hasn't proved very popular, but it seems interesting. Can you describe it a little more?
TT: I visited Spiel for the first time in 2009, but the first time I was there selling my own game (and the only time so far) was in 2010 with Aether.
Aether is a somewhat brainburning abstract game, with some similarities to Samurai. You can actually play it for free on the Onni Games website. Aether has since been republished as Matter by SimplyFun in the USA.
PS: The year 2011 was very good for you, with three of your designs published. How long did you work for the success of that year?
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PS: Principato looks like a nice family game, but weren't you afraid to create another game about building your kingdom when this theme is so popular?
TT: Well, I did not think about it that much when I started to work on the game. I personally like the Renaissance theme a lot, and I had not worked on that kind of game before. In this case, I wanted to find the best theme for the game mechanisms I had, and somehow the game just worked the best in the Renaissance setting.
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TT: One of the initial ideas behind Walnut Grove was the tile-placement mechanism for the field-tiles and the way you activate them by placing workers. Although the tile-placement aspect is a bit different than in Carcassonne, I think in both games it is an important aspect of the game. Both games also have a little bit of a "puzzle" feel to them.
Originally we wanted to make a game about farming. Agricola was the natural inspiration for us, and we even started to call the prototype "Agricola-lite". The game evolved in different directions, and although it does not mechanically resemble Agricola that much, it has a bit of a similar feel to it. In both games you need to feed your folks, survive the rough years, and try to score points while doing it.
If possible, I try to have a potential publisher already in mind when I start to design a game. Even if the game eventually ends up published by someone else, it helps keep me focused. In the case of Walnut Grove, we actually had Lookout Games in our mind from the start. I had met owner Hanno Girke at Spiel 2009, and he seemed like a nice guy – and he liked another prototype I showed him back then – so it was a natural place for us to offer the game first.
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Eclipse designers playing the game in Lautapelaamaan 2011 (Image: Mikko Saari)
PS: When did you start working on Eclipse and weren't you afraid to take on such a big project?
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PS: Did you use something special to design so complex a system, or just paper and pencil?
TT: In the development process, we used simple softwares, like Excel and Google docs. Programming complicated tools is rarely worth the trouble in my experience. Nothing beats the good old-fashioned human mind and intuition.
PS: Right now in March 2013, Eclipse is ranked fifth on BGG in terms of its rating. Did you expect it to be that popular?
TT: During the development process, we got amazingly good feedback from our playtesters. Also we really, really enjoyed the game ourselves – but of course, you never can be sure what the big audience will think, or whether the game will even find its right audience? Eclipse is a hybrid game in many ways, which made it even harder to predict the response from the community. Also, it is a game that rewards commitment and experience; it can be brutal to new players, and it is easy to dismiss it as a luck-driven game – which it really is not.
So although I was hopeful that the game could be well-received, it's been amazing to see it happen and with such force!
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TT: Big Daddy's Creations contacted us to say that they were interested in the game. Soon we agreed on terms. We are excited to see the final result as the company is known for high-quality iOS games!
PS: In 2012 the first big expansion to Eclipse, Rise of the Ancients, was published. What were the main ideas when you started working on this expansion. Are you already planning the next big expansion?
TT: During and after development of the base game, we came up with a lot of interesting ideas as to how the base game could be naturally expanded. After the game went to print, we started to develop these ideas further. Initially this was just to amuse ourselves, but happily the publisher also thought there would be room for an expansion. Rise of the Ancients expands the game space in many ways and brings more variety for players. The expansion is modular, and you can choose which elements you want to use in a given game. As the name suggests, some of the new elements are related to Ancients, the mysterious old species which inhabits the Galaxy.
As for making another expansion, I still see unexplored territories, and we actually have some ideas for this already, so it's possible that there will be a second expansion at some point – but let's wait and see.
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Tahkokallio playing Enigma and losing, as a good designer always should (Image: Antti Koskinen)
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TT: In Enigma, players control a group of archeologists exploring an ancient temple. To explore the temple and unlock new pathways, players need to solve different type of puzzles. The solving is done simultaneously. The players who succeed at the puzzle-solving get to place a new temple tile on the game board. In this way players uncover new areas of the temple. Players lay archeologists in rooms on these newly discovered areas. Later players score points if they succeed in closing the network where the room is located. The game ends after one player has gathered 15 points.
The game has four different types of puzzles, totaling 120 unique puzzles. I tried to choose a varied type of logical and visual puzzles for the game so that players with different tastes could enjoy the game.
Enigma came out in Scandinavia from Competo near the end of 2012 and is unavailable elsewhere at the moment. I know there has been some interest towards it, and I'm hoping that it could be more widely available soon!
TT: Yes, there are real differences between these versions. Both Arvuutin and Voll ins Schwarze are games about making a good numerical estimation about tricky questions. The players give their answers by playing cards from their hands. In addition to simply making good guesses, players also need to do hand and risk management in the game.
One big change from Arvuutin is that Voll ins Schwarze uses a different scoring scheme. Also, the game is now played using four categories in one game (instead of five). The physical realization is also quite different – much better, in fact – as the questions are placed in the slots of the game board instead of small boxes. The original boxes used in Arvuutin were quite expensive to produce, and they easily fell down.
PS: Can you say anything about your current game design projects. What we can expect from you in the future?
TT: I'm currently pretty involved in working on digital games, so unfortunately I have less time for board game design. Nevertheless, I have some smaller and bigger board game projects in the works, but cannot say too much about them yet!
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