tabletopgaming.co.uk 35games since the focus is not as much on that
part. I guess that’s just how the game came out
in my own personal taste.”
KEEP PLAYING THE HITS
Between Decrypto and Anomaly, Dagenais-
Lespérance’s first two published games
have marked him out as a game designer
unwilling to settle for the familiar – and with
plenty of that previously pent-up creativity
still left to unleash.
“I’m trying with each project to do
something a bit di erent,” he says. “I still have
many other games in my backlog that I’m
trying to get published.”
Dagenais-Lespérance mentions that
he’s currently working on an asymmetric
team strategy game that he calls “kind of a
roll-and-write”.
“Wargame would not be the right term,
but a bigger scale game that’s based on a
roll-and-write mechanic,” he adds, saying the
current design involves teams of two passing a
notepad between the players on each side, each
individual able to add something unique to it.
“Also I would like to make a blu ng game.
at’s what I’m doing right now, trying to
work on a blu ng game. Which is something
I really like. And having a blu ng game which
works really well for two players is kind of my
goal right now.
“ ere’s an old Alex Randolph game that’s
a blu ng game for two players speci cally
that I really like. I don’t think it was ever very
popular but it was called Xe Queo! or Der
Isses! It’s an old, abstract blu ng game. I’d
kind of like to recreate just the experience,
some aspect of that experience, and have
it work well for two players but also maybe
at two-to-four, two-to- ve or two-to-six,
something like that.”
While the success of Decrypto has
undoubtedly opened doors for Dagenais-
Lespérance, the designer says that he
still feels the need to keep on pushing for
something that goes beyond the expected.
“At the end of the day the new games I’m
showing them still have to be up to par,”
he says. “I’m still not to the point of Reiner
Knizia or Bruno Cathala or I can just kind of
take some old games and my name would
be enough to get them published. It’s still
certainly not up to that point.”
He comes back to classical music, and the
invaluable experience he gained composing
instrumental pieces for musicians toperform that has come to define the way he
makes games.
“Something I learned during my bachelor’s
was that you should really try to make music
as simple as possible if you want it to get
played by people,” he explains. “Because you
try to nd a violinist, you try to nd a pianist or
whatever instrument and they have other stu
to do, they’re already playing classics, well-
known pieces, so they’re like: ‘Why should I
play your piece? It’s going to take me time to
practise, I’ll have to learn the piece and then I
don’t get like a big return on the investment.’
So if you want to get your pieces played, they
needed to be as good as possible but also as
simple as possible. Just so that the barrier of
entry would be as low as possible.
“ at aspect is very much present in board
games: if you want to get your game played, it
should be as simple as possible for what it is.
at same kind of thinking of ‘I have this idea
and I want to communicate it, but it’s going
to have to be played by actual people who are
not in my head and I have to communicate
that information to them, and why would
they play my game and not play, like, a
classic?’ at goes for board gaming and for
music as well.”As well as the monster chasing them, the students need to deal with a leaky reactor