I remember this moment very vividly – Przemysław is sitting in my office, it’s 2018, a few weeks before the Detective release. The game is already printed and will soon debut.

’I want you to write me a spy thriller. Cold War era, players taking the role of CIA agents sent to Europe and dealing with some epic KGB operation. Would you be interested?’

He smiled.

***

At that moment, we were after the first demos of Detective at various conventions, and I was pretty confident we have something exceptional here. I knew we would need a follow-up. Changing the role of detectives into spies sounded really cool. New theme, new challenges, different angle and mechanisms.

***

Przemysław Rymer, the writer of the plot, was in heaven. He is a long-time fan of all those books by Frederick Forsyth, Ken Follet, and Tom Clancy. I guess I should also mention his fascination with the political history of Europe. He can quote books by Suworow or le Carre on the fly. He was born ready for this task.

He started building a plot. Based on real Soviet agendas and goals, set in real places and involving historical figures. He was the right man to create the most immersive spy-themed thriller the tabletop industry ever saw. Trust me, he took it seriously.

***

I got the script a few months later. It was around 30 pages long. I was reading it, and it was – believe it or not – sitting on Google at the same time checking the facts and names because the mix between the fictional story and real events and characters was just insane. It was a perfect immersive blend that took me to Europe in 70 in the middle of a secret Soviet operation.

I green-lighted it without any single comment. 'I love it,’ I just said, and we were able to move to the next stage. Make a game around it.

***

It took us months to write the Vienna Connection. Intense, immersive spy-themed thriller as nothing before seen in the hobby. I read a dozen books about the Cold War era and got into it deeply. The year 2020 was, for me, the Cold War-era year. Books, comic books, movies, TV shows, even podcasts! I consumed it all. I even began to run RPG games with my friends set in Berlin of that period. It was crazy.

***

I have a fantastic job. I work with super talented people and create games I always dreamed of. Vienna Connection is on pre-order now, and if you ever wanted to play as a CIA agent in operations against the Soviets, you must play it. I said it. You must play it. It’s great.

And Przemysław? A few months ago, at the beginning of 2020, I invited him to my office again. I asked him to write me another story. And, yes, he smiled again…

***

Link to Vienna Connection pre-order page: https://portalgames.pl/en/vienna-connection/
Link to Portalcon with new titles announcement: https://portalcon.pl/en
My vlog: https://www.youtube.com/c/PortalGamesStudio/videos

Rise of the Empire introduces three pillars that add new gameplay elements to the Imperial Settlers. The first one is well known for all fans who played Imperial Settlers solo variant I published as a free expansion back then in 2014. I will discuss this element today as an opening material for this short series of articles.

Playing Imperial Settlers in the solo campaign mode (free PDF can be found on BGG) or with the Rise of the Empire expansion, you’ll have a series of games that conclude with a special phase at the end of the game – Managing your Provinces. In terms of the theme, it’s the time to manage the growing Empire – taxes, investments, new constructions, and others!

When playing Rise of the Empire campaign, each player receives a dedicated sheet that represents their domain. On this sheet, there is a map where you mark lands and provinces you already conquered. After each game, you mark one new territory. Each of these has a different cost – the cost you must pay to support and keep the province in future games. That’s why the first thing you must do after finishing the campaign game is paying the maintenance cost of each Province you already have in your Empire.

It’s the first of many important choices you must take. When playing Rome, will you conquer the Provinces that have a stone in the maintenance cost? It’s easy to pay for you, sure, but if you spend stone on keeping Province, you won’t have a stone to score points during the game.

As the campaign progresses and you must pay a dozen of resources to keep the Empire intact and keep all Provinces under control, you start to feel like these Roman Emperors, who struggled when the Roman Empire reach the point, when the collapse was the only answer.

After you pay the maintenance cost, the much more fun stuff happens – you draw a new Province card. In the Rise of the Empire, you will find 55 new cards that represent different Provinces. All of them are Production cards, so they boost the Empire’s resource engine. When you play the campaign, you start with all your Province cards already on the table, so the more Provinces, the more strong start in the first turn. The cost, in the end, balances it out in a big way, though…

That’s the first pillar. Gain new Provinces after each game. Get them into play right from the start and have a fantastic start. Have Japanese faction start with the production of Gold and Stone. Play Barbarians who produce a ton of Apples. Command Romans that have a few additional Swords in production from the start… It’s time for your Empire to rise. Eager to find out how it ends!

I am with Rob Daviau at Grandcon, and he goes like 'I have this idea for a new Antares feature, but I am not sure if this is possible…’
’It’s possible.’ I promptly say. He didn’t even manage to finish the sentence, but let me tell you this – when the industry icon has a new idea for Detective, you say you can do this, period. You just have to keep in mind that long conversation with whining Portal Games Digital team is your first step when you get back to Poland.

Rob wanted to give players the feeling, the sentiment of old school adventure video games, those in which you choose some pre-constructed dialog sentences, and you choose one to move the story forward. Instead of reading the transcript of questioning like in the base game of Detective, you’d actively pick the questions you wanted to ask.

The idea was brilliant, but I was not surprised. I greenlighted it, so obviously it had to be good.

Over the months of designing and development, the system was evolving, and Rob was sending me updates. He prototyped the Interview feature, and we were able to play-test it. It turned out Rob went even further with immersion and putting players in the shoes of Detective – there were no pre-constructed questions anymore. There was a blank space and simple instruction: What do you want to ask about?

I typed: KNIFE.

The system reacted: I have it from my father. It’s a family item. What’s the problem?

I typed: ALIBI

The system reacted: I was with my buddies. We were watching baseball. I have a dozen people who can confirm that.

I typed: TRZEWICZEK

The system reacted: I don’t know anything about that.

Strange. But that was a clue. The guy was not a boardgamer.

***

Dig Deeper expansion is a single case that takes players to Boston. Not only it is a new amazing story to discover, not only a new case to crack, but you must understand – this is a new expansion designed by the industry veteran. And with the small tweaks in the system like the Interview feature, you can appreciate and understand what industry icon means. It’s not a blurb on the book. It’s a sign that you will play good old Detective and yet, you will experience something absolutely unique.

I am happy for you. You are gonna love it.

There are two teams at Portal Games HQ. There is team #RobIsAwesome, and there is team #IHateRob. I must admit that #RobIsAwesome team is much bigger. Frankly speaking, it consists of most of my employees. The opposition, the #IHateRob team consists of only Portal Games Digital, and after all those delays they procured in the past months, I can openly say that I am, and I always was in the #RobIsAwesome team.

I need to give you some context, huh? OK, let’s get back to the beginning. I think it was Gen con 2019…

***

‘The case takes place in Boston in 70′ and…’ Rob does the pause, looks at me and continues ‘…and there is no Antares database. It’s the seventies. People used libraries back then.’

Libraries. Books. Mystery. Lovecraft. I love Cthulhu. Man, I miss Call of Cthulhu games. Maybe when I get back from Gen con, I could… Rob notices he lost me on ‘library’.

‘Ignacy, focus!’

I am back. ‘Yeah, library. I get it.’

‘If players need files, need dig deeper, need to find something in the archives, they’ll go to the library.’ he smiles ‘And then they wait!’

‘You mean?’

‘You fill in forms, and that’s it. You wait. You get an answer the next day. If you are lucky…’

***

Rob introduced to the Detective the delay mechanism – you fill in the form, you put a library token on the time track, and you will be able to get the result a few hours later when the time token meets it.

It’s smart, it’s thematic, it changes the game and the way you approach the case, as players need to think ahead and follow different leads without some important data that they’ll get a few hours later from the library. With Antares and modern crime it was so different. The change in pace here was significant.

I loved the idea, I green-lighted it. And then Portal Games Digital entered the scene. You’d think if the mechanism is called ‘delay’, they’d love it.

Nope.

***

I don’t want to spoil too much. I don’t want to ruin the surprise and the experience, so let me be very subtle here and just tell you this.

Rob is crazy. Instead of giving us files that players find in the library, he wrote the whole damn dialog lines with the library employe. Each time you visit the library, you have different dialog scene, different things happen additionally to the basic file you were looking for. Just a small spoiler, look at this:

Gary, the librarian, is a hippy. Ponytail. Beard. Glasses. He’s reading a book called the Master Dungeon Guide or something. You mentally note to keep an eye on this guy. Gary looks at you with a twinkle in his eye. “Hello adventurers! Here to pick up your loot? That’s my word for ‘research’.” Gary is a hippy and a nerd. Great.

So Portal Games Digital was ‘very happy’ to code all these dialogs, write the whole code to recognize which dialog you already saw, which one to show next and all that jazz. You can imagine.

***

And that’s why, dear detectives, Portal Games Digital is in #IHateRob camp. That’s why the rest of the company is in #RobIsAwesome camp. And that’s why I have no doubts – I can already produce tees with the logo. Because as I said, I have no doubts – you’ll be in the #IloveRob team.

So we play Tash-Kalar – me, Michał Oracz, Multi and Walec. Another Essen 2013 release that needs to be tested, analyzed and hopefully praised.  After 60 minutes we are done. Alliance of Walec and Multi wins. Both of them are so fucking excited like they just  won at lottery. I mean, I know, they kicked Boss’s ass but hey, chill out boys. 'You won’t believe it’ Walec says. 'I have prototype of  the exact the same game. I wanted to present you it in two weeks’ he says to me. 'Only difference, my board has hexes. Rest exactly the same.’ ’You won’t believe’ says Multi and takes sheet of paper from his desk. 'Here is a draft for my prototype. I was going to finish it this year. This is exactly this game.’  And he shows us his notes. This is Tash-Kalar indeed. 

*

So here is my advice, young designers – don’t make notes. Make games. Because when you are taking notes, some one is just finishing his work on this very same idea… 🙂