The great thing about working on games as a duo is that you always have someone to bounce ideas off. The worst thing about working as a duo is that you have someone to entertain all of your nonsense.
Nearly a year ago we had an idea for a game that about organizing cards in a specific order, the hook of the game was that all of the cards would be face down and you would have a little pool of actions at your disposal to identify the cards. We fiddled with some cards and actions over breakfast each day, then GenCon was over, and the little game was promptly forgotten about.
Until it wasn’t.
When Darren was looking through his notebook last week he ran across the notes for the nameless game and he decided it was time to start fiddling again. So he created some “art” for the cards printed them up and took them to a Durdle meeting. (It was lunch, we had wings, they were really good. Shoutout Wing Champ!) With the power of chicken wings it was time to work through a bunch of 12-month old ideas.
The first thing we learned that the action pool from a year ago was garbage. However there was still something about organizing a row of numbers, when only your opponent could see the cards. After an hour (and a dozen Salt & Vinegar wings), we had the basic bones for a game that was not terrible. The new game involved asking prioritized questions to the opponent while showing them two of your cards. The bones were there, but it needed a bit more attention to cement it into the Durdle lineup.
After a few more days of poking at the idea we finally had a name for the little game- “Constellé”. Which is French for “Starry”, we hope. We did ask a French speaker, so we might be wrong, but we shouldn’t have backed into anything terribly offensive.
A few more days after that we had some card faces. Aren’t they pretty!
And after a few more days…we still didn’t have a game. But it’s early, we’re still plugging away at this one. It’s not on the front burner, it might not be on the back burner, it might be in the slow cooker. I might be out of kitchen metaphors. But it’s an idea that is worth a little distraction as most of are games are in late stage play testing at this point. So for now we’re giving it enough attention to prevent it from dying on the vine.
If you’re interested in trying ‘Spelldice’ or ‘Cramazon’ of ‘Aimbots’, send us a message through our Contact Page.