Tell us a little about yourself?

Hi, we are three friends with a great passion for tabletop gaming. Andrea is an informatics engineer and now he is living in Switzerland. Elisa has been working in export sales for many years and now she is living with Pietro, a civil engineer, in Piacenza (near Milan, Italy). Playing tabletop games is a lifelong passion that Andrea and Pietro has shared from childhood. Elisa got close to board games when she met Pietro and has started to share the apartment with him and all his boxes!

What games have you designed or are currently designing?

We are designing Brides & Bribes and it will be our debut product on Kickstarter, September 7th!

This is our first game and we got the idea many years ago but in the last three years we developed the last version that you will see in a few days.

When we decided to create Brides & Bribes, our idea was to create a fun game with a lot of player interaction, where each player can have access to many choices in a fair way, but difficult to grasp. We wanted to design a game with an innovative characters placement and give the feeling of becoming one of the most powerful Genoa Family during the Renaissance time.

That’s Brides & Bribes: a board game for 3 to 5 players, at least 60-90 minutes, set in Genoa during the 16th century.

People can find more stuff about the game and us on our website: www.spaceballoongames.com

What are your top 5 board games?

Well, this is a difficult question because we love many games and each of us has his top list!
We can say that all of us really like Age of Empires III, Smallworld, War of the Ring, Imperial Assault and Shadows of Camelot, as you see we are a bit eclectics….

What game or designer influenced you the most?

About graphic design, we really like Days of Wonder! They are our example when thinking about illustrations!
About game design, I think Uwe Rosenberg and Martin Wallace are the ones we like the most. However, since we have started to know more about the board game world and new projects on Kickstarter, we can say that there are many great designer and artist out there! We backed some project for their great art and new ideas!
About giving courage and convincing us to start this beautiful adventure, without doubts Jamey Stegmaier! Without his incredible work on his blog we wouldn’t have starter anything.

What is the game mechanic you are currently obsessed with either as a designer or player?

As players, we love games that involve hidden choices and a lot of interaction between players! Lately we are also experiencing the introduction of computer application in modern board gaming (like XCom).
As designers are now exploring story driven games were the players can “live” an adventure and grow in it every game they play.
What is your design style? Theme first? Mechanics first? Player Experience? Something else?

Definitely Theme first! We are now designing another board game and first we had the theme idea and now we are trying to find out the right mechanics to give the players the theme feeling.

If you were to give advice on how to design games, what would be your top 3 rules to pass along?

1. Play a lot of games (any game! Old and new alike)
2. Get a theme you love and make a simple game out of it.
3. Never, ever, be afraid to playtest it with anybody, hundreds of times, making treasure of every comment you get!

Who do you turn to for design help?

Mainly friends for the first prototype and then the gaming community!
There are a lot of conventions big and small (that are) easy to attend were you can bring your game.
Gaming clubs are also a good place to meet nice people willing to help.
Then of course Facebook and BGG are always there……

How many games do you have in process?

We have different project open for the future, a card game and a filler game are in the closest. But now, we have to really focus on the current Kickstarter campaign!

What trends or changes do you see in the future of board game design?

According to the latest date from ICV2 board game US industry grow 56% from 2014 to 2015.
From Europe is more difficult to get sure data but we see more and more people to fairs and expos.
People are rediscovering the beauty of staying with friends around a table!

What do you wish people knew about game design?

That you need to have a lot of patience and be really motivated to get it done!
Having the idea and making the first prototype is only 20% of the work! And this is the fun part. Then comes the playtests, the balancing of the game, the frustrations…..but if you never give up the reward is immense!

Tell us one crazy fact about yourself?

Elisa started to play games only 6 years ago….and here we are with our own publishing company. The magic of board games indeed……

Is there anything else you’d like to say?
Thank you so much for this opportunity and great questions!
If people want to find out more about our project, and us, they should look at Spaceballoon Games website , our Facebook page, the Brides & Bribes Facebook Group , on BoardGameGeek .
“Grazie” and play more games! Always!
Ciao,
Andrea, Elisa, Pietro

Written By

Dave A