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A cooperative real time action game of exploration and escape.
Can't say much more about this one yet, except that it will include a great sound track. And curses.
A short designer diary
Normally, board games are good at stimulating our analytical sides - and I really do enjoy that. Usually when designing a board game, I start with an interesting mechanic or a theme. But my aim when designing "Escape" was to invoke a specific range of emotions. Some computer games and movies can stimulate very real feelings of distress and fear. So why could not board games do the same? Fear is a primal thing, and computer games and movies have some obvious advantages over board games in these matters: First of all, they occur in real time, something I believe is very necessary in order to stimulate primal feelings. When ever you pause a computer game or a movie, you are taken out of the illusion. Fear presupposes lack of control, and if you could control time, an approaching tiger wouldn't be that scary anymore. Secondly, movies and computer games can enhance emotions by the aid of a sound track. Ever tried wathing a horror movie with the sound off? Not very scary. Been attacked by a mute tiger? Not scary at all, just silly. Thirdly, in the case of computer games, they can have very intuitive controls and even mechanics that are invisible for the players. It's hard to be afraid while shuffling a deck of cards or doing calculations in your head. So this called for a real time game with a sound track and an easy and intuitive "interface".
A direct source of influence for me when designing the board game "Escape" was Valve's terrific computer game "Left4Dead" and its successor. And I did not just want to recreate the feeling of horror, but also the softer "relational emotions" that occur when someone risks their own safety just to help you out of an impossible situation. So this also had to be a cooperative game.
The very first prototypes actually worked very close to what I was aiming for. Still, the game would benefit from hours of play testing and tweaking - most of which was conducted together with Emil Amundsen, with whom I also co-designed the South Pole racing game "Roll to the South Pole".
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