Langskip Board Game Development Log #2 (Late 2020 - Early 2021) Finding the Theme

Welcome back to the second installment in this short mini-series of blog posts. If you are reading this back in the future, I’m sure somewhere on the site (either the sidebar of the blog or a subpage) I will have have collated all of these development diaries about Langskip into one. 

Anyway, this post is now about the transition of theme, from Cat Game to Viking Game (aka Langskip). I partially covered this in the last blog post but in much less detail as it was to mainly highlight the change in mechanisms, deck size and handsize. This post is all about theme!

So back in December 2020, I was still on my placement year at university. However, unlike most placement years where you are essentially an intern at a company in a similar field to your degree, I instead chose to partake in a Enterprise Placement Year, or EPY. As you guessed, EPY works differently to a traditional placement year. In EPY, you are your own boss, there are few deliverables, and it is mainly down to you to do what you want and to try and make the most of it. You have a crack team of amazing tutors and advisors that you can speak to on a daily basis, and it is just generally one of the best way to get started running a business. During EPY, my goal was to create two games and publish them before my final academic year at University which starts this September. I had a head start with Food Time Battle in Space, as art was already commissioned and the design was mostly done before September rolled around. However, with Langskip, when I started in September of 2020, it was still Cat Game. In fact, it was still Cat Game right up until the end of the year.

So what changed? What was the moment that made me think, “Vikings”. Well, there was a few things. First off, in early December I was in a voice channel by myself in the EPY Discord group. (For people reading in the future, this was a Covid year, so everything was online. The voice channel was supposed to mimic what it would be like working in the EPY building on campus, meaning that you would be sat at a desk, and people would come over to chat with you about your work, maybe you would go out for lunch and discuss ideas etc. Well we didn’t have any of this during out EPY year, so Discord had to do. Anyway, I was sat by myself in the channel, then suddenly Caitlan joined. Caitlan is an animator, illustrator and a bunch of other cool things, and she was telling me what she was working on, which so happened to be some really cool digital art for some sheep sticker sets. I immediately loved the artwork she was showing me, and as I currently didn’t have an artist for Langskip, I asked her if she would be interested in drawing me some cats (remember, this was still when it was Cat Game). ​

Some of Caitlan's original pieces :)

This was the first bit of concept artwork for Langskip as a "Viking" game. This little lad was the singular thing that tipped the scale and convinced me to change direction.

Fast forward about a week when she got started on a couple of examples for me, my brother, who helps out with the company, playtesting, brainstorming, conventions etc, told me that he thought that cats had been overdone (in terms of themes in board games, not overbreeding (though something could be said for that as well)), and suggested a bunch of ideas. I think one of them was bears but I might be wrong. However, one that was definitely said was Vikings. Now, to demonstrate how well this just all clicked together with Caitlan, I never got that cat example. Instantly, it was Vikings, and then Loki. Not only were the illustrations beautiful, but the way that Caitlan jumped on the idea, on the theme, I knew that this was the best way to proceed. Just as a side note, if you are ever collaborating with someone and are deciding on which direction to go with, go with whatever they are most excited for.

At this point I’d love to talk about any juicy twists and turns in development, but it was almost like a fairytale with regards to the artwork (similar to Fodsley with Food Time Battle in Space), almost all artwork didn’t require much tweaking, apart from a very Marvel looking Thor, but other than that it was smooth as can be. 

Next post is going to be all about the design philosophy, playtesting and making the game as fun and understandable as can be.

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The very Marvel Thor.

The considerably less, but still recognizable Thor.