ARTICLE: I Love Building Stuff

2009, Stronghold. The Invader builds Catapults, Ballistas, Ladders, Bridges… all kinds of different machines… and items to create a deadly mechanism to destroy this damn castle. Defender does exactly the same. He puts Cannons in towers, he builds Platforms next to walls, he brings Pots and Poles, and makes Traps…

2012, Robinson Crusoe. They call them castaways on stranded Island but actually you could call them Builders. Build shelter. Improve roof. Strengthen palisade. Make tools. Build dam. Make weapons. Basically – build stuff or die.

2014, Imperial Settlers. Build as many Production cards as you can. Boost your resources engine and then build more. Build all those feature buildings that give you free stuff when you trigger their ability and then build action buildings, build all those great locations that’ll take your empire to new level and change it into perfect machine changing resources into Victory Points.

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Yeah, I am obsessed with building in games. Building engines, building your own stuff, creating your tablou with your own stuff. I have no doubt where this obsession comes from.

I am an old RPG gamer. For years I was building characters. I was playing games and I was building my own sims. I was having dwarf warrior and I was giving him a badass axe and mithril armor and awesome shield. I was giving him strength potions to hide in his backpack along with dwarf beer and a couple of rings with special powers. I was giving him allies and supporters. And when he was rich enough, I build him a castle and a few villages.

I was building all my life. And man, I know how cool it is to build something.

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Rattle, Battle is with no doubt my most crazy design. You toss dice in the box, you move them around, you do all this crazy shit you would not expect from a game that has Trzewiczek’s name on the box.

And yet, although you will toss twenty dice, although you will act like a pirate, although you will be sinking merchants just because it’s fun, there will also be time for building. You will build a lot. It’s Trzewiczek’s game for God sake!

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Building your very own pirate ship was a concept I loved from the very beginning. Adding additional sails so your ship can sail faster. Adding more cannons to become dreadful pirate. Adding holds so you can bring more loot. That was easy and fun. That was choosing your basic strategy and having fun at the same moment. It was like in old days – you are playing dwarf (more cannons), elf (more sails) or human (get more stuff).

But actual fun began when I came with this idea of Unique Upgrades. Put crazy Harpoon so you have longer range cannons. Get Monkeys throwing bombs to boost your stats in combat. Install a Drill and sink enemy ships if you can touch them. Build the Secret hold to store any number of gold tokens.

Build your own ship. Build our own Pikachu.

I gave all those pieces to players and I saw their eyes shine. I saw players putting like six guns on their vessel. I saw player building ships long like a dachshund. I saw players who were taking the Drill only because it looked so freaking cool and they wanted to have it on their ship for looks.

I saw players having crazy fun building ships. Whenever they won or loose, it didn’t matter, because they were happy achieving something in the game – building their very own dream vessel.

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There is no secret weapon, no magic sauce, no mysterious trick in the fact that games like Sims or Minecraft are worldwide bestsellers. We all love building.

And I love designing games about building. Lucky me!