Sometime in late 2013, I had this weird idea that it would be fun to try to turn the game of Go (an ancient and amazing 2-player game) into a multiplayer game. It was really just a distraction from the stress of day-to-day company life, but somehow it kept coming back.
Now, through the amazingly generous support of many (friends and strangers alike!) the game is on now already funded on Kickstarter and still growing*! This would have been impossible to imagine way back then but it happened. Somehow more and more people helped, we tested, we changed things around, we laughed at idiotic rule choices!
Making the game has been an amazing journey and it was especially fun to reflect on it last week when we crossed the funding like and I wrote a longish (ok, very long!) Reddit post about the journey. Having never designed a game before we tripped over a lot of things and no doubt still will!
More than the fact that the game will actually come to pass though, I realize that the process has been really important as an occasional distraction from day-to-day work. Don’t get me wrong: I’ve loved what I’ve done all these years, BUT sometimes you need to let go. Letting go sounds easy – just like sitting on the sofa right? For me at least, it’s always worked a whole lot better when I have another world to immerse myself in!
So thank you to all those that have been part of the journey. I’m sure there’ll be more updates to come because the campaign is still ongoing, but it’s already been amazing thus far!
Most of all though, I wanted to encourage others: don’t let go of the weird little ideas, they add a lot of color to life and eventually might make it onto a bigger stage!
This current lockdown environment might just be the time to start working on an old idea again.
Lastly, I’d be remiss not to add that if you know anyone into board games, we’d love for them to take a look at the project (link): we’re adding new things every few days and taking feedback to make it as amazing as we can!
Photo by Vlad Tchompalov on Unsplash. (Cleaner shrimp / Seychelles)
