Introduction: How My Interests in Board Games and Music Resulted in a Board Game ABOUT Music
Come Together is the first board game I have ever made. It is a medium-weight, worker-placement game (but with some twists as you will understand from reading) with a music festival theme, and it was created together with Eilif Svensson and Åsmund Svensson from Chilifox Games. I am very proud of the final product, which will be released at SPIEL ’22 in October. This is the story of how Come Together was made.
For about twelve years, I have been a hobby board gamer, but I have been a music enthusiast from a very young age, and some of my best experiences in life have been related to music festivals, for example, Groezrock in Belgium, the Slottsfjell Festival here in Norway, and the Roskilde Festival in Denmark — the 2012 Muse concert was epic! — to mention a few.
Coincidentally (but maybe not surprisingly), I started doodling with the idea of making a board game with a music festival-related theme. That would be a perfect match, I thought! I imagined a thematic Eurogame in which players would build stages and tent camps instead of churches and gardens (as in so many other games), a game in which the resources were artists and the audience rather than wood and grain! I was thrilled with the idea.
Thus, my journey into board game design began.
The First Prototype, and the Gathering of a Design Team
Believe it or not, at first I had no ambition of actually publishing a board game! It was just a fun idea that kept me occupied — and it did so for quite a while. For weeks I could totally forget about the design, but at other times I would stay at the office after work, for hours, just to be in a quiet environment to work on the game. On one such night, everything just sort of fell into place. I could finally see how it all would fit together, and I realized that I could do something more with the idea.
I decided to make a prototype and call upon my good friends Eilif and Åsmund Svensson of Chillifox Games to ask whether they were interested in giving the game a test run. Eilif is a recognized game designer behind Trails of Tucana, Santa Maria, The Magnificent, and more, and the two brothers had great success in 2021 with both Riverside and Doodle Dash, so if they were interested, maybe this could turn into something more than just an idea…
Luckily, they both liked my idea! This was February 2021. In Norway, things had opened up after the corona lockdown, and we managed to play a round in my living room with a self-made game board, paper cards, and meeples and coins collected from other board games — and antibac! Eilif and Åsmund liked it and decided the project was worth working on, and thus a design team had been established.
Even though I knew the game was far from finished at this point, I had never imagined it would take about 35 prototypes, 14 months, and umpteen playtests before we finally could send the finished game to the factory for printing.
In the picture below, you can see how the game has evolved from my first prototype to about midway through the process, then to the end result.
Claim or Gain: The Core Mechanism and Player Interaction
When designing my first board game, I wanted to make something that immediately would have caught my own interest had I heard about it from somewhere else. I am proud to announce that Come Together has become such a game!
Personally, I enjoy playing a lot of different types of games, but one core element that attracts me is player interaction. When playing a game, I like that my actions impact my opponents’ choices and vice versa. This preference has nothing to do with being “mean”, but rather, with player interaction creating an unpredictability that I like. A good example of such interaction can be found in the Brass games, in which a player can build a coal mine that allows another player to build an industry, which in the end will grant both players points!
Come Together is lighter than the Brass games, but it shares the same idea of mutually beneficial player interaction. I will not go into detail here, but one example from Come Together is that either players claim certain resources (stages, tent camps, artists, or audience) or they activate the spots where these resources are gained. Thus, one dilemma is whether to claim or to gain. The interaction in this is that when a player activates a worker spot, it is activated for all the players who are present at this spot. As such, one player can piggyback on another player’s activation action. Another dilemma is whether to place a worker to get what you need the most or to place workers where you will get the most publicity, which you get from placing workers at the same spot as other players. This core idea has been central to the game from the beginning.
Some of the location tiles where players claim stages, artists, camps, and audience
The Design Process, or the Importance of Bringing a Laser Printer on a Cabin Trip
Even though I had some experience from playtesting and participating in games evolving from early prototypes to finished products, being a first-time game designer, I had no experience in using advanced editing applications. For the first prototypes, I used Paint. In addition to being very clumsy, another downside of this program is that whenever I made a mistake, the only solution was to erase and start over.
A breakthrough came at a cabin trip in April 2021. Eilif, Åsmund, and I drove to a cabin in Kongsberg and spent a weekend there (away from kids and work) to focus entirely on the game. We packed the car with linens, clothes, potato chips, beer, my newly printed prototype — and, of course, Eilif’s laser printer.
You may laugh about bringing a laser printer on a cabin trip, but I tell you, it came in handy! As we had to edit the game several times during the weekend, I saw how efficiently Eilif could make prototypes with a lot of experience and the right editing tools — and with the laser printer, we quickly made new prototypes that we could play right away. From then on, Eilif made the new prototypes.
In the year following that weekend at the cabin, most of the work has been about adjusting and balancing the game through numerous playtesting sessions. I will not go into details about all the rejected ideas, changes, and different phases the game has gone through, but if it is of interest I can probably do so on a later occasion.
On average, a new prototype has been made almost every tenth day. I have met with the other designers on an almost weekly basis, and we have spoken on the phone or text messaged each other almost daily. Often and very enthusiastically, Eilif would call me about new ideas for small changes. Being the initiator of the game, I have naturally been reluctant to many of these suggested changes, but more often than not, these changes have been for the better, and Eilif and Åsmund’s ideas have driven the project forward and ultimately made the game much better.
Two of the player boards, which have asymmetric set-ups on the reverse side
One of the things I was most reluctant about was the player count. Eilif and Åsmund have insisted that every Chilifox game should be playable with up to six players, while I was more determined to make the design work solo. Trying to make a worker-placement game for 1-6 players is bold. Not only did we want the game to support 1-6 players, but we also agreed that we wanted the game to feel the same and be approximately the same length at all player counts. Because of this, every time the three of us decided to make a change to the game (no matter how small), we also had to test this change at other player counts to make sure it would not have some unintended scaling impacts on the game. However, with sufficient determination and repeated playtesting and a lot of good friends who were willing to keep playing our unfinished prototypes, we succeeded in making a game in which the number of players have little effect on the time it takes to play.
Creating a World of Music
To create a game that works mechanically is one thing, but to create a game that also works thematically is another. How we could create our own “world of music” in this game was something that took a long time.
From the beginning, it was important that the theme of Come Together shine through in the mechanisms of the game. None of us were interested in making a game that felt like it could have been played with any other theme. After all, if it had not been for the thematic inspiration, the game would never have been designed in the first place!
After long discussions, we agreed to set the festival in the late 1960s and chose design and band names thereafter. Inspired by art and music from this psychedelic period, we came up with 35 unique artist names representing the time period of the game and the designated genres of the different artists. Through details like these, I hope that Come Together will shine as a thematic Eurogame, and that players will feel this when they play it. Hopefully, players will feel that we have created not only a board game but our own “world of music”, too!
What Have I Learned?
Finally, have I learned anything through creating my first board game?
For me, it has been easy to come up with cool ideas, but adding all of those ideas into an already established set of interlocking mechanisms in a way that does not tilt the balance of the game has proven to be much more difficult than what I would have imagined.
Thus, one of the most important lessons I have learned is about the importance of working together and to never be too proud of one’s own ideas when they do not work or do not make the game better as a whole. My initial idea might have been a good starting point, but I now know that the game would have come to nothing if it were not for my co-designers, Eilif and Åsmund. By working together, we have managed to create a game that, hopefully, gamers and families alike will enjoy, like I have enjoyed making and playing it!
Eilif’s long experience as a game designer has been priceless and helped us avoid a lot of “detours” during the process. Thanks to his experience, he has quickly come up with solutions to most of the issues we have met during the test rounds, and Eilif and I have been in contact almost daily over the last year, discussing details about the game. While I often have been reluctant about his ideas, which I imagine has been frustrating at times, I recognize that Come Together would not have been a possibility without his professionalism, and I truly am grateful to have him as a co-designer. Eilif was also responsible for writing the rulebook.
Åsmund is relatively new to game design (with only two games behind him), and making this game accessible for both gamers and families alike is much thanks to his efforts. With less experience in heavier Eurogames, he has contributed with valuable input when it comes to making the game more intuitive. His ability to see things differently and come up with “crazy” ideas should not be underestimated either! With his expertise in 1960s music, Åsmund has contributed valuable information when it comes to artwork and band names for the cards and illustrations, in addition to his proofreading of the rules and an eye for details.
Finally, I have learned how much fun it can be to just sit around a table with good friends and see a game evolve from a mess based on a good idea to something the three of us truly are proud of. Hard work has paid off, and opening up the first production copy of the game was one of the most thrilling experiences in my life, alongside the aforementioned Muse concert. More than anything, Come Together, to me, has been a passion project that I have worked with for almost one-and-a-half years, and I am so happy to see it come to life.
To everyone who has read through this whole text, thank you so much! I hope this read has given you some interesting insights into the process of making a game for the first time, and hopefully, in a few months, we can all “come together” and celebrate love, music, and the fact that we once again can meet each other and have a good time!
On display at Gen Con 2022
