Recently I had the pleasure of a conversation with Randy Flynn, designer of multi-award winner Cascadia and currently running a Kickstarter campaign, for intriguing and equally gorgeous-looking variant, Cascadia: Alpine Lakes.
Welcome, Randy, you’ve designed a number of games but are best known for Cascadia, a beautiful game and one of my favourites; how did the game come about? How did you get from initial inspiration to final design?
I was reflecting on this recently, having told the story many times, and realized something about the genesis of Cascadia. The original notes I had which led to the game didn’t even mention pattern-building. The game came about on the flight home from a vacation where we had just played Tiny Towns (newly released) and Orbis.
The design note I found on that flight just mentioned a two-level tile-laying game where the first level dictated what could go on the second level. While reading this note on the flight, I started designing what would become Cascadia. And I had a playable prototype within the week. I suspect the pattern building of Tiny Towns and the tile adjacency of Orbis had some impact on pushing me to have that second level be about pattern generation.
What were the trickiest things to get right?
The early version of the game had a board which restricted placement quite a bit. It was a fun mechanic, but it also meant the variability from play to play was low and that you could and should map out your entire set of patterns at the start. The first thing we did after I signed Cascadia with Flatout Games was to try it without the board.
We didn’t change anything else at all, and yet the game was instantly better. This was the first of a number of changes that accomplished one of the goals I always had for the game—that the tiles coming out in the draft would encourage you to shift strategies or at least tactics as you played.
There is a Cascadia expansion, Landmarks; can you say anything about the decision this time round to make a whole new game in the Cascadia world with Alpine Lakes rather than expand on the existing game?
As soon as it became clear that Cascadia was successful and would last more than the typical 6–12 months, I hoped to create a sequel. The Landmarks expansionis something that we knew we could design well and quickly since we already had a lot of ideas. That was more about pruning the ideas down and refining them, especially based on feedback from KOSMOS who were very keen to have an expansion.
Alpine Lakes came about when I was struggling with some tile-layering ideas for a new game. I decided to try and apply my ideas to something that could be a Cascadia sequel (the tiles were hexagons already). At that point the core of the game came together rather quickly. Once I had something working, I showed it to the Flatout Games crew. They pretty quickly signed on to develop and publish it. I think one of the important aspects of this is that I didn’t want to produce a Cascadia clone with minor changes.
Why not move into a different domain altogether instead of sticking with the Cascadia theming?
The Cascadia brand is incredibly strong, and that’s worth taking advantage of for the publishers and myself. There’s surely a delicate balance between producing fresh new games in the line that people still recognize as having Cascadia at its core. I like that challenge, and I think we’ve done a good job of not producing something that’s just a thin remake. I hope we can continue to do this well.
For the benefit of readers who don’t know, could you summarise the differences between the two games?
Alpine Lakes retains a number of things from Cascadia that any player will recognize and understand immediately. The draft is identical. Nature tokens work the same way. Wildlife tokens are placed on habitat tiles that have icons to tell you which wildlife kinds and allowed. Every player makes their own environment and mostly scores on how well they’ve done with only a few areas of competition on scoring.
However, Alpine Lakes is also very focused on elevation, and there are a number of mechanics and scoring systems that push you in that direction. You can and should place tiles on top of one another. Because they are double hexes, there are some very interesting aspects to how you do that well. In some ways, the role of wildlife and habitats in scoring is reversed. The habitats dictate the patterns the wildlife must be in while not caring about which wildlife kind is used. The wildlife score separately based on their elevations, and the player with the highest of each of the wildlife will score bonus points.
So, if you know Cascadia you already understand about half of the game. At that point, will you enjoy one more than the other? Possibly. There’s no doubt that the complexity level of Alpine Lakes starts slightly above Cascadia, but it also scales a good bit higher if you add in the environment scoring cards. Regardless, we hope we’ve created something fans will instantly recognize as Cascadia while really appreciating the differences.
Were there other ideas for the game that you rejected, and why? Perhaps what I’m really asking is: will further Cascadia (or Alpine Lakes) expansions be coming along? :-)
Amazingly, nothing was rejected. There are ideas for future expansions, but nothing being fully developed at this time. There are other games "in the universe" being considered as well, the way Cascadia Rolling Rivers and Rolling Hills was. But we have no intention of rushing these things. Each game should get its time in the sun and new games should be worthy of adding to the line.
How important do you think solo play is these days? I note that a few fans on BoardGameGeek have created more sophisticated automa modes for Cascadia than the inbox one—what are your thoughts on the complexity of solo play?
I think solo modes have always been important for games on Kickstarter. If a game that is crowdfunded can reasonably have a solo mode then it probably should. I think since the pandemic lockdowns, more people have discovered the joy of solo gaming. Digital implementations can really take advantage of that and draw even more fans. Dire Wolf’s Cascadia implementation has a wonderful Daily Trek mode with new solo challenges every day. I play these most days and really enjoy them.
I appreciate a solo mode that is as close to the multiplayer experience as possible. This can be tough for games with high interaction, which leads to solutions with automa. These work great for some, but personally I don’t enjoy them very much unless it’s digital so the app can do all the work. When Shawn Stankewich first proposed the solo mode for Cascadia, it just felt right. If you can play the game at all, then you can play the solo mode. If you learn the solo mode, you can learn the multiplayer mode in two minutes.
You mentioned Dire Wolf’s lovely digital adaptation of the game. Let’s look at that more generally: how do you feel about physical vs digital board games, and will we see Alpine Lakes in a digital form?
Digital implementations of board games is a surprisingly complex space for a publisher. They have to consider the revenue they will earn as well as the physical sales they may lose. Will a poor implementation hurt their reputation? Does a digital implementation discourage sales of the physical game or enhance them? I’m not an expert in these areas, and I think publishers need to be thoughtful with their plans. Cascadia has a web-based “demo” that only has the A scoring cards, and I believe this was helpful during the Kickstarter campaign and beyond, because the experience is quite good and teaches you the core of the game. For playing with others, there is Tabletopia version of Alpine Lakes which also has some limitations. I used it to demonstrate the game with Amanda Panda early in the campaign, and it was a very good exercise. Digital implementations are a great for folks to familiarise themselves with the game and play with remote friends.
I think this is an evolving area that might look quite different 5+ years from now. I think digital play is important, and I think full fidelity experiences are important. I also think the best implementations need to take advantage of things that you simply can’t do in a boxed physical game. Wordle certainly taught us a lot about that.
The Kickstarter campaign for Alpine Lakes has been massively successful, and I’m sure a lot of that is down to the popularity of Cascadia—I think this campaign is very well presented, but reckon you could have cut corners (on the campaign, I mean, not the game!) and still have been as successful. I would go so far as to say the game would have been a great seller even if you had done everything inhouse and headed directly to retail, so I’m interested in why you chose the crowdfunding route, and why you put so much effort into polishing the campaign pages.
Crowdfunding campaigns are currently a core part of the business model for Flatout Games, and they would be better folks to answer this question as it relates to their games. However, I can say a few things that I’ve learned through working with them and others crowdfunding my games.
A successful crowdfunding campaign is great early advertising for a game going to retail. It’s important that you are planning for this from the start, but when done right it’s a great combination.
These campaigns also do something that is really important for small publishers—guarantee profitability or at least a certain amount of cash flow. It’s all well and good to say that sure this game or that game would have done fine going direct-to-retail. However, you can’t be sure of such things, and it may take time for those dollars to come back to the publisher. A successful crowdfunding campaign gives you that cash up front and allows you the flexibility to plan the rest of the product run from a position of strength.
How’s the campaign at the moment, and what’s coming next?
The campaign was completed on December 6 with over $340,000 in funding from almost 7,500 backers. In the current board game economy, I’d say it did quite well but within reasonable expectations. It finished with a strong showing in the last two days. The game design is now complete, and the final manufacturing files are well on their way. The goal date for delivering the game is September of 2026, but the team will be doing everything they can to beat that date if possible.
Flatout Games’ schedule is a lot busier than it was when I signed Cascadia with them. They’ve got lots of work going on multiple fronts. I’m involved in some of that. For example, I’m on the CoLab team developing the recently announced titles Forage and Honeypot. In fact, they were developed alongside Alpine Lakes, though they are very different games. I have one title I co-designed with someone else that is on their current schedule and will be assisting with some other titles during that time.
I’ve spent all this time talking about Cascadia and Alpine Lakes, but you’ve been responsible for a heap of other games. Are there any you’d particularly like to tell us about?
The one non-Cascadia game of mine you can buy today is Tabriz. It also happens to be the first game I publicly playtested and got signed. It’s published by Crafty Games and is in stores now after crowdfunding successfully a while back. It’s a very different game than Cascadia—worker movement and resource gathering with a Persian carpet theme.
Can we expect to see more Flynn games in the not-too-distant future?
I have several other signed games but none that I can really talk too much about now. One that I co-designed with Joseph Z Chen (of Fantastic Factories fame) will come out this Spring. It’s the first of two card games Joseph & I designed, and I’m excited to see each of them get out in the world! I hope the announcement for that one comes before long so I can talk about it more!
What board games do you play, and what do you particularly like about them?
I’m essentially an omni-gamer. I play most kinds of games. I love mid-weight euro games like Concordia (my favorite) and never get to play enough of them. I also love games similar in weight to Cascadia. Kohaku is one we recently pulled back out and enjoyed immensely. I also play a lot of card games like 6 Nimmt and Skull King.
What can you tell us about Randy Flynn, the person outside the game industry? What do you do in your spare time, if such a thing exists?
During the day, I’m a software engineer, a full-time job in and of itself. So, spare time is definitely at a minimum. I’m a soccer fan and a basketball player. It’s been years since I played basketball thanks to the pandemic, but I’m about to jump back in. So, we’ll see how that goes! My wife and I have two lovely dogs here in Seattle, where I’ve lived since happily moving here over 30 years ago. Our son graduated university in 2024 and is now out on his own. I love to hike & backpack, though those activities also got seriously curtailed due to the pandemic. But I’m also dipping my feet back on those when I have time and decent weather.
Where can we find out more about you and your work?
My public social media is on Bluesky and Instagram. If I’m saying anything about board games, it will be there.
Thank you, Randy. It’s been a pleasure talking with you.
Thank you for the opportunity to say some words! I enjoyed it quite a bit.
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