One feature that has been mentioned repeatedly is that his bots work in ways that give players some insight into what they might do.
That may sound weird, but I’ve heard other people talk about them. The bot in Anachrony and other bots by David Turczi have also inspired me without me actually knowing the rules. On a tangential note, Maquis has gone beyond its print and play roots and was published by Side Room Games a couple of years ago. That system inspired the worker placement system of the artificial opponent in Viticulture which is also a worker placement game. One of the games in that contest was a game called Maquis that had a worker placement system where enemy workers were placed via cards draws. MMP: As mentioned, I participated in a print and play solo games design contest. Viticulture DM: Which solitaire games (specific designs or multi-player variants) inspired your own design career and why? We’ve also started working for other publishers: Feuerland (Gaia Project and Terra Mystica), Funtails (Glen More II), Van Ryder Games (Hostage Negotiator: Circle of Automa), and a promo solo mode for Lookout Games (Patchwork). The Viticulture solo mode became a success and from then on Jamey started asking my team and I to make solo modes for all his games either in the core box or via expansions. The sheer coincidence of that made me check out the game and I ended up chatting with Jamey and giving him input.ĭuring the development of the Tuscany expansion for Viticulture some playtesters requested a solo mode for the game and not being a solo gamer himself he turned to me.
In parallel with this I got to know Jamey Stegmaier of Stonemaier Games by random chance because my family and I came home from a vacation where we had visited a vineyard in Tuscany just as Jamey started a Kickstarter for a game about running a vineyard in Tuscany. They had given me some of my best board gaming experiences ever.Īfter playing solo games for a while I started a blog about solo games and participated in a print and play solo game design contest. I knew that solo board gaming existed, but it had always seemed a bit weird to me, I mean, why not just play a video game? I found out, though, that for me video games didn’t scratch the itch I wanted scratched and so I gave solo board games a shot while expecting them to miss their mark.Īfter trying Lord of the Rings LCG and Dawn of the Zeds I was sold. Suddenly we found ourselves very limited in how often we could find time to sit down together and play games. My journey started when my son was born and many of my friends were also starting to get kids. MMP: It is indeed an extremely specific niche and if you had asked me some years whether one could make a living making artificial opponents for board games, I would have thought you crazy. Can you tell us your design background and the story of how you discovered this niche? Creating solo modes for other designers’ games is an extremely specific niche. You are the founder of Automa Factory, a design company specialising in single player versions of multiplayer games.
Automa Factory founder and lead designer, Morten Monrad Pederson joins Diagonal Move to discuss his take on solo game design.
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