And then, I glanced at the back cover and there it was – an ancient manuscript with drawings of old moravian dukes from eight century. They looked exactly as funny as you would expect, but there was something special about that illumination – all figures looked like a part of a puzzle, as if you could easily disassemble the whole scene and rearrange as you see fit. At that moment – something in my head clicked: I had an idea for a board game!
I am not a complete designer virgin. I have created about ten children's games and wrote four gamebooks. But they were all done for Extrapublishing as add-on gifts for their line of kids’ historical magazines. They were modest in scope and I had to respect the quite limited amount of space I was given. I had a desire to make my own game which would be unique in its theme, but thoroughly enjoyable and playable – after a few encounters with simulators I took a deep dislike to their dryness and procedural clumsiness. At the same time I had a few plays of games with fantastic production quality, cool figures and great illustrations that were, at the very best, very mediocre in terms of gameplay. And inside me was growing a feeling that I could do it better.
That heureka moment in a train put me in a state of frenzy and for several days afterward I could barely work. I created some very basic prototypes of dice and started playing with the basic concept – a medieval painting, that could be assembled like a puzzle, improved, customized and decorated with angels – and all of that had to be somehow merged into an economic system, that would look less like an economy game and more like an artistic endeavour.
But there was a problem with the topic: secular personalities from early slavic history are not interesting enough and there are not many visual sources. Yet I didn't want to steal from other cultural backgrounds, since Norse and Celtic worlds were already plundered enough. Then it struck me – Orthodox icons, Ukrainian, Russian, Byzantine and Greek – vere plentiful and carried not only fantastic artistry, but also a great history, and religious weight. And because I had visited Kyiv during a press trip with its amazing monasteries and undeniable claim as the birthplace of Kievan Rus, it was decided.
How did it go? Read the next chapter.