My name is Krzysztof, I live in Poland. I’m fascinated with board games since 80s. I started with games from Polish publishing house “Encore”. I remember that the first were “Save Your City”, “Labyrinth of Death” and “Star Merchant”. When “Talisman” appeared, we all went crazy. We didn’t even leave the house, we just kept fighting to take the Crown of Power. In the end, the cards and the board got so wiped that it was impossible to see anything. We played this game to death.
Somehow, so naturally, I started designing and playing games with my friends (“Battle for the North Atlantic”: a mix of naval strategy with… “Monopoly”, “Pyramid” – game inspired by the game “Montezuma”). New releases were rare at the time, so we played my games.
Later I played a lot of strategy games from “Dragon” publishing house: “Ardennes”, “Crete”, “Grunwald”. Who can tell how many Saturdays we spent from morning till late night planning an effective offensive? Of course we also played the first Polish rpg games (“Warhammer”, “Call of Cthulhu”).
In the mid 90’s I invented a football (US: soccer) game called “KP Futbol”. It was a mix of RPG and football game. With d300 throws match events were generated: chances, fouls, unusual events. Each of us led our own team, conducted trainings and wrote down the results in a grey notebook. We played 5 full league seasons. There was not enough courage in me to publish the game.
In the meantime, I started a full-time job in an office, and I hid my board games in a cardboard box. I played only on PC (“Football Manager”, “Combat Mission”) and PS1.
But soon board games came back to me in a big way, and with them the old fascination was revived. I bought three games at once: “Arkham Horror”, “Agricola” and… “Rushing Turtles”. Everything started again. Beautiful graphics, cubes, crystals: now it was much better to play.
I discovered sports simulation games (“Strat-O-Matic”, “Replay Baseball”, Second Season”) and created my own detailed soccer simulation (the game lasted as long as a match: 90 minutes). It also went to a drawer :-(.
During some party and spontaneous inventing absurd titles for tabloids I thought: why not make a game out of it? After many tests and changes I finally sent the project to a few Polish publishers and… it worked. It was amazing to see my own game (“Extra Facts”) on the shelf in the market store. Later I also published „Wild Football”, game for children (soccer theme, of course).
What games do I play? Almost everything. GMT games (“Twilight Struggle”, “Combat Commander”), “Magnates”, “Neuroshima Hex”, card games (“Hero/Star Realms”, “Settlers”). I’m still trying to beat my mother-in-law at “Ticket to Ride” (she’s good, really). I’ve organized a regular group of gamers to test my prototypes (unfortunate for them…).
I focus mainly on designing games and writing (absurd short stories and dramas). I’m also fascinated by programming and mobile games – their huge, growing popularity and involvement of thousands players.
I encourage you to play “Solo Hockey”: my ice hockey simulation and Football: Play It Again.
Krzysztof