Recently I had the pleasure of chatting with David Falla de Acebo, designer of Ashes & Amber, which I’ve written about already.
Welcome, David. Ashes & Amber is your first game release, is that right? Can you tell me what inspired it, and how you got from the initial idea to the fully-fledged design?
I will not joke by saying that I have wanted to make a board game since I was 10 years old (40 years ago, damn!). With my brothers, we were always twisting and changing the rules of the games we had back then. There were not as many games available as there are today, so we were constantly inventing and reinventing things.
Even now, when I play a game, I always have this sort of itch in my brain. It is like a meta-game running in parallel where I am already imagining how the rules could change. Over the years I think this slowly builds something in your mind. Ideas collide, 99 percent of them disappear, and the remaining ones slowly take shape.
So when you ask what inspired the game or where the initial idea came from, it is actually a very difficult question for me. And it is the first of your questions, ouch. It is really a mixture of everything I have played over many years.
But if I have to name a few games I love: Innovation by Carl Chudyk, Terraforming Mars by Jacob Fryxelius, Wingspan by Elizabeth Hargrave, Nations by Rustan Håkansson, Age of Galaxy by Jeffrey CCH... Many different inspirations floating around in there.
Nice list of games! How would you compare your game to other civilization building games?
I wanted something more lean and smooth than many civilization games, but at the same time something that could feel as epic as Terraforming Mars (although Terraforming Mars is not really a civ game).
I know that sounds like a big ambition, and I honestly do not know if I achieved it, but that was the goal: very simple mechanics that can still create a deep game.
I also do not like to compare games in terms of quality of experience because that really depends on each player. What I tried to create here is a strong sense of achievement. At the end of the game, your civilization is standing there, and you know it exists because of the decisions you made.
I also wanted to give the game a small storytelling aspect. As you play cards and add them to your tableau, each step should feel a little rewarding in itself. You are not just placing mechanisms on the table, you are slowly watching a civilization take shape.
Civilizations are built bit by bit, after all.
I am not even sure I answered your question here!
What were the trickiest things to get right, and how long did it take to be fully satisfied with what you’d produced?
The trickiest thing, honestly, was dealing with imposter syndrome.
Sometimes it becomes very hard and I do not feel happy with what I have done, because I keep thinking that someone more experienced could have done better. I think that comes from being a perfectionist and always wanting to improve things.
So the hardest step was actually to say stop. To accept that what I created is good enough to exist in the world. After all, I enjoy playing it myself. And to finally launch it.
And even while writing this, I still see things I would like to improve. So being fully satisfied does not really exist.
Were there some ideas you rejected, and why? Might some of these appear as future expansions?
The first big one was a 5-6 player version.
The game could actually work with 5 or 6 players quite easily. You would add a fifth and sixth Scoring card to the Achievements (which are basically the scenarios), and include Amber and Fire cards for those players. Mechanically it works.
It would also remain reasonably fluid because players can start their turn before the previous one fully ends. As soon as they decide whether they will claim a card or not, the next player can already begin.
But we rejected this for two reasons. First, we simply did not test enough games with 5 or 6 players. It is surprisingly hard to gather that many testers regularly. Second, the game already has an epic scope, and with six players it might become a little too epic in length.
That said, I still have ideas around this, like splitting the table into groups with a shared objective.
So maybe one day.
Another rejected idea was having a unique action on every single card. That was actually one of the earliest versions. It was incredibly rich, but also way too complex.
So I simplified things. In the end the game became more interesting because I pushed most of the unique abilities into the Tribes instead. Then the design challenge was to create a progression from Era 1 to Era 5, while keeping some early cards intentionally simple. Prehistory acts a bit like a tutorial phase.
And yes, there are many other rejected ideas. Hopefully some of them will appear in expansions or other games!
The game’s currently on Kickstarter, and doing well (fully funded in two hours!): can you give readers an outline of what crowdfunding involves?
Yes, I am very happy with the campaign so far. I am honestly amazed by how positively people are reacting. It triggers the imposter syndrome again, but that is manageable!
I prepared the campaign extremely carefully. Not only the content of the page (which might actually be a bit too dense, I know!), but also the financial side.
Running a campaign requires a lot of advertising. You need to find a tiny place in the world’s attention, and that is extremely difficult. I work with a partner for that because I am very bad at advertising my own creations.
And since I am also quite bad with social media, the margin for success becomes quite thin. So crafting the campaign page as well as possible was very important.
Stretch goals are also essential. They keep the campaign alive. And honestly, both as a child and as an adult, I love unlocking secrets. When there is a game inside the game, it is always fun.
I am drifting off topic again, sorry!
A lot of campaigns I’ve looked at offer Tabletop Simulator implementations (or similar) of their games, to let potential backers get an idea of gameplay. I’m not entirely convinced that works amazingly well, though it does show that the design is more than pictures on the Kickstarter page. How do you feel about such demos, and is it something you might contemplate for Ashes & Amber?
I would actually love to have that so backers could try the game.
Last year I even built an online implementation myself from scratch. I am a software developer, so it was doable. But in reality we almost never used it because my friends and playtesters strongly prefer playing physically.
Eventually I stopped maintaining it.
Uploading everything to platforms like TTS also takes a huge amount of time just to prepare all the assets. Since I am doing everything alone, I had to be very strict about where to spend my time.
And even then it already feels almost impossible to do everything.
Taking that a step further, what are your opinions about digital boardgames? Might we see a digital adaptation of Ashes & Amber sometime, whether a native app or a BoardGameArena port?
In theory Ashes & Amber could work quite well digitally because the core mechanics are simple. You are basically playing cards on top of or underneath stacks.
But personally I have always been very unsatisfied with the user experience of most digital board game adaptations. For me there is always a lot of friction.
Even during the Covid years I struggled with that.
If it ever reached the level of polish of something like Hearthstone (which is amazing), then sure, why not?
Do you have any advice for people wanting to get started on game design or crowdfunding their projects?
Everyone says the same thing, but I will say it anyway.
Create something you would personally love to see exist. Something you would love to play yourself, and something you would enjoy sharing with your friends.
Then be ready to spend one thousand times more hours on it than you originally expected.
And when you think it is ready, you will discover it is not ready at all. And that is perfectly normal.
So you keep working on it a bit more, and eventually you launch!
As a consumer, I find the biggest problem with crowdfunding is cost: shipping is often extortionate (though not so much in this case), and over here, we get walloped with VAT and potentially import duty on top. That issue is reduced when going via retail, so I like that you’re offering a retailer pledge level, but so many campaigns don’t that, so I guess it can’t be easy. Can you say something about direct to purchaser vs retail distribution?
Yes, shipping costs, VAT, all of that is something creators must take into account. Setting the price of the game is very difficult because of those factors.
Oh! Another piece of advice for the previous question: do not expect profit for a first project. That does not really exist either.
I know many people prefer to wait until a game appears in retail rather than backing on Kickstarter. That is completely understandable.
But there is something I need to say here: before Kickstarter, I have the feeling the board game industry was very conservative, very slow. Kickstarter changed it in a very positive way. When Kickstarter appeared, suddenly people could support extremely creative and unusual projects directly. Many games that would never have existed otherwise suddenly became possible.
So for me Kickstarter brought a lot of fresh air into our hobby.
Because of that, I have a part of me always wanting to thank Kickstarter for existing and I personally do not mind paying shipping and VAT and backing several projects each year.
What boardgames do you play, and what do you particularly like about them? Have you any stand out favourite at the moment?
Right now one game keeps coming back into my mind: Age of Galaxy. I think it is a masterpiece. A slightly unknown masterpiece. It is simple and brilliant.
The game I probably play the most at the moment is Age of Innovation. Another “Age of...” game, apparently I have a theme here.
It is almost perfection. But there are no cards in that game. That is a bit of a shame.
I really like cards. Did I mention that already?
What else can you tell us about David Falla de Acebo, the person outside the game industry? What do you do in your spare time, if such a thing exists?
I am also very proud of another project in my life.
I am the founder and head coach of an international youth basketball program where kids from different countries come together to play on the same team. They often do not know each other and sometimes do not even share a common language.
They are usually around 10 to 12 years old, so it can be quite challenging at first. But they end up creating friendships and memories that stay with them for life.
Just after the Kickstarter campaign ends we have a tournament in Spain with kids coming from Lithuania, Latvia, Finland, Czech Republic, France, Italy, the United States and Ukraine. Every year we have kids coming from Ukraine, now. When they meet new friends and laugh with them, that’s irreplaceable.
So, sorry if I don’t answer the messages during the week after the campaign! Priority to the kids!
Where can we find out more about you and your work?
I am very bad at all the social media things, it’s too time-consuming. So come home (I live in Vilnius in Lithuania) and I’ll show you my game design den!
Thank you, David. It’s been an illuminating conversation.
Thank YOU! It was great to open up about everything that has been spinning around in my head, especially during the slightly stressful days of a Kickstarter campaign.
