Recently I had the pleasure of chatting with Borys Bińkowski, designer of EcoLogic: Europe and its forthcoming expansions, which I’ve written about already. A new game building on the theme, Ecologic: North America, will be coming to Gamefound soon.
Welcome, Boris. EcoLogic: Europe was your first game, is that right? (And popular enough to warrant a reprint and expansion.) Can you tell me what inspired it, and how you got from the initial idea to the fully-fledged design?
No, EcoLogic isn’t my first game, but, as is often the case with developers, my first games haven’t been published (yet). I have a civilization game in the works (working title “GEO”), but it consists of many complex components, which is why I haven’t had the courage to publish it yet.
The inspiration for EcoLogic stemmed from my fascination and knowledge of nature (I have a PhD in natural sciences), as well as my interest in board games themselves. I simply noticed that while there are many nature games on the market, there wasn’t one that properly captured the ecological connections between the many different species of plants, animals, and fungi. One day, while on a boring vacation in Croatia, the idea to create such a game simply popped into my head to relieve the boredom.
How would you compare this to other nature-based games such as Wingspan?
To be completely honest, on those boring vacations, my friends and I would kill time playing board games, and Wingspan was (and still is) one of our favourites. I love it for the atmosphere it creates, but I was really bothered by the fact that it only features birds, and its mechanics don’t really reflect the ecosystem itself.
Sometimes, the more you like something, the more you get annoyed by its imperfections. That’s what happened with Wingspan, and that’s what led me to EcoLogic.
On the surface, they’re similar games - they have a similar theme and graphics, and the cards are played similarly in habitats. But that’s where the similarities end.
In EcoLogic, besides birds, we also have other animals, plants, and fungi. I invented a special mechanic for this game, which I call biomass flow, which allows species to interact with each other, creating food chains. There are also a number of small mechanics that allow you to notice other interactions (e.g., symbiosis, weather, or seasonal influences).
What were the trickiest things to get right, and how long did it take to be fully satisfied with what you’d produced?
The entire process, from concept to release, was a huge challenge. Everything I did was for the first time. Of course, I had solid preparation from my previous projects. However, considering the number of things that had to be taken care of - from preparing the graphics and prototype, through testing, to crowdfunding on Gamefound and production itself at the factory, I’m surprised it all went so smoothly.
I guess it came at a good time, when in the digital world, there’s a growing interest in spending time with loved ones while exercising our brain cells. And the nature theme seems to fit nicely into the niche of board games, which are filled with what I call “fairies and monsters”.
Can you give us some hints about what’s new in the North America version?
Sure. It will be a new game, in the sense that it can’t be combined with the European version. This is mainly due to the game’s much larger geographical scope, which covers the entire North American continent. Therefore, we will no longer have habitats, but biomes, such as prairies, temperate forests, deserts, and taiga. If there is interest, I plan to add four additional biomes in expansions, including the Arctic, Atlantic, and Pacific coasts.
Although the mechanics are still undergoing initial testing, the familiar biomass flow mechanism will certainly be present, but other elements will be changed. For example, players will not play cards from their hand, but from a group of cards placed in the centre of the table, which will provide more interaction between players. Some things will be simplified, and the game will generally have significantly simpler rules, which doesn’t mean it will be easier strategically.
The initial tests are very promising, and I think the gameplay will be significantly better than EcoLogic Europe.
That all sounds very interesting. Were there some ideas you rejected, and why? Might some of these appear as future expansions?
It’s hard to remember which ideas didn’t survive after a while. There were certainly many. For example, I had the idea to create a board in the form of a giant circle of life, with plant cards on the outside and predators in the centre, but I abandoned it for the simple reason that it wouldn’t fit on a typical kitchen table.
Other changes mainly involved cutting and removing excesses, especially minor mechanics that don’t add much value. I think I didn’t cut enough, especially since most players bought the game with all the expansions, which caused the box to grow to 2.5kg.
EcoLogic North America’s base version certainly won’t be that large, although everything points to it containing more than 350 unique species cards.
I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on the upcoming campaign! On that topic, you’ve use crowdfunding for your games: can you give readers an outline of what that involves?
It’s actually very simple, especially on Gamefound, which is designed exclusively for financing board games.
You can buy a game there that hasn’t been released yet. You pay for it upfront, allowing you to buy it cheaper, and you’ll get it a few months, sometimes a year, later.
For me, this is a huge convenience, allowing me not only to raise funds to publish the game (I don’t know if a bank would give me a €200,000 loan to publish a board game), but also gain a platform for selling it.
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 Gamefound page. How do you feel about such demos, and is it something you might contemplate for the EcoLogic games?
A demonstration game for TTS is currently being developed, though I must admit that I’m not really into playing like that, which is probably why I’m not really into it. It’s true, clicking cards on a computer is a completely different experience than playing at the kitchen table with family or friends.
Do you have any advice for people wanting to get started on game design or crowdfunding their projects?
My God, where to begin...
I think the most important thing is to start creating if you have a cool idea, not because you want to be like other creators you admire.
A large dose of humility helped me. Whenever I could, I’d say I didn’t know anything about it, so other creators or gamers could offer advice and tell me what could be changed. Thanks to this attitude, many people, often more experienced than me, simply contacted me, and I was more open to introduce changes to my game.
One more thing comes to mind. The observation that proven and interesting mechanics and the game’s atmosphere are important for game satisfaction, but the graphics, especially the ones on the box cover, are much more important for sales. No one will buy a game, even the best, if the cover doesn’t entice them.
However, there are literally hundreds of such tips for beginners, and I don’t even consider myself an expert in this process.
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. This is less of an issue for retail, so what consideration have you given to including a retail distribution option?
That’s the common perception, but it’s not entirely true. If I ship a game to various locations around the world within two weeks of receiving it at the warehouse, I do have to pay for shipping, but I don’t incur other costs, especially collective transport, warehousing, or the retailer’s margin in the country of sale, etc.
You, as the buyer, see on your invoice, for example, €60 for the game and €15 for shipping, and that seems like a lot. But if you were to buy the same game from an online store in your country, you might pay €5 for shipping, but the game would definitely cost at least €90.
Shipping outside of Europe can be significantly more expensive. Large companies usually have local distribution centres, which lowers costs; unfortunately, I don’t have one, so shipping to the US was around €35. That’s a lot, I know, but on the other hand, American customers didn’t pay VAT, so the total cost of the game, including shipping, was only slightly higher.
What boardgames do you play, and what do you particularly like about them? Have you any stand out favourite at the moment?
You know what, I’ve played a lot of different games, of course, but I can’t say any of them are my favourite right now.
I appreciate Wingspan for its atmosphere, and I used to really enjoy Tapestry, which I still recommend to everyone. There’s also the now iconic Nemesis by Adam Kwapiński - a game that keeps you on your toes.
But I still enjoy playing my games, both those on EcoLogic and those I haven’t released yet.
What else can you tell us about Borys, the person outside the game industry? What do you do in your spare time, if such a thing exists?
I’m so lucky that I’ve designed my life around what I enjoy; giving myself space for hiking and other nature excursions. All of this is tied to my professional work, which for some time now has been creating board games.
Where can we find out more about you and your work?
For now, I’m mainly recommending the Gamefound profile. The game is best described there. I do have Facebook and Instagram pages, but as someone who doesn’t particularly use these media outlets, I don’t care so much about them, so Gamefound is the best place to start.
Thank you, Borys. It’s been an illuminating conversation.
About the author
When not playing boardgames or blogging about them, L.N. Hunter keeps himself occupied writing fiction: a comic fantasy novel, The Feather and the Lamp, sits alongside close to 100 short stories in various magazines and anthologies, and on websites and podcasts (see https://linktr.ee/L.N.Hunter for a full list). L.N. occasionally masquerades as a software developer or can be found unwinding in a disorganised home in Carlisle, UK, along with two cats and a soulmate.
