Meet Lily Lockett: the 13-year-old designer who turned her school
homework into a board game that might just change the world
IF YOU BUILD IT
Words by Matt Jarvis48 February 2019
W
hat were you doing when
you were 11 years old?
Lily Lockett was just like
any other typical pre-teen;
she played games, did her
homework and spent time with her family.
Except she also happened to be the lead
designer of board game Build and a key part
of Double L Games, the family-run publisher
founded to take her game to the wider world.
Build started life as a Year 7 homework
assignment set during a Geography lesson on
international development.
“We were told to make a board game about
it,” Lily recalls. “A lot of people did Snakes and
Ladders, you know, roll-and-move games.”
Lily and her family had been playing
games of a di erent sort, discovering
hobby board games with Matt Leacock’s
co-op hits Forbidden Island and Pandemic
as their introduction.
“So obviously I had a few di erent ideas,”
she says.
e night before her homework was due,
Lily sat down to play it with her dad, Martin,
a Dungeons & Dragons roleplayer in his youth
who had found his previous passion for
gaming reignited after starting a family.
“He was like, ‘ is is really good, but it’s
not nished,’” Lily says. “I was like, ‘It’s got
to be in for tomorrow! It has to be nished!’
He was like: ‘Don’t hand it in, we’re going to
publish this.’
“So obviously I had to explain that to my
Geography teacher.”BETTER TOGETHER
In Build, players take on the role of island nations
emerging from a history of war and corruption
under the leadership of a new government: the
people around the table. e players pursue
sustainable development objectives over their
four-round term in o ce, competing to lead
their own citizens to prosperity while potentially
having to work with neighbouring countries
to overcome disasters such as famine and skill
shortages that impact the entire region. Each
player can choose whether to commit some of
their resources to combat the shared problem,
but the issue won’t be avoided completely
unless everyone pitches in.
“At the beginning it wasn’t semi-co-operative,”
Lily, now 13, says. “We then realised the world
doesn’t work without people talking to each
other. It’s like a game, really. ey can’t play
their own country. We were like, ‘Right, we need
to make this so it’s a lot more co-operative.’”
e countries are guided by their unique
specialism – be it in agriculture, trade or
education – and secret mandates that inuence
what they invest money gathered through taxes
and trade into, from building farmland and
villages to trade links with other nations. ough
the focus is on working together for the greater
good, Build’s origins as a realistic simulation of
international diplomacy means that there is the
potential for war to break out – though entire
playthroughs can go with no conict at all.
“It can really destroy somebody’s country,”
Lily explains. “Which we thought was good –
especially if it’s in an educational environment,that shows people that war is very destructive. We
see it on the news and although it’s hard for us to
realise – especially for us in this country – it kind
of gives that sense that it’s really destructive.”
e Locketts say a signi cant challenge of
designing Build has been treading the line between
being satisfying for typical players, while also
accurately depicting the often complex decisions
and processes countries face in achieving
sustainability that means the game could nd its
way back into school Geography lessons.
“I found when we were doing our topic of
international development, it was quite boring,”
Lily admits, laughing. “We played a game that just
wasn’t that encouraging. I wasn’t very interested in
it. So I was like, ‘Right, we want to make something
that’s fun that we can play in the classroom
because that’ll make people more interested.’
I could see from a rsthand perspective that
people weren’t very interested in it, and it is an
important topic to teach people about.”
Lily and Martin say that they’ve met
plenty of interested academics and teachers
attracted by Build’s potential as a teaching
tool while showing the game at British gaming
conventions, but it’s not only classrooms here in
the UK where the game might make a di erence.
“We were talking to some people we
know from the International Development
Consultants who basically said we’d like to
invest and back it, because they wanted to have
100 copies to give to schools in Africa to teach
them about international development,” Lily
says. “We were, like, ‘Wow, okay.’ So we had to
[go], obviously, full steam ahead.”Lily admits, laughing. “We played a game that just
wasn’t that encouraging. I wasn’t very interested in
it. So I was like, ‘Right, we want to make something
that’s fun that we can play in the classroom
because that’ll make people more interested.’
I could see from a rsthand perspective that
people weren’t very interested in it, and it is an
important topic to teach people about.”
Lily and Martin say that they’ve met
plenty of interested academics and teachers
’s potential as a teaching
tool while showing the game at British gaming
conventions, but it’s not only classrooms here in
the UK where the game might make a di erence.
“We were talking to some people we
know from the International Development
Consultants who basically said we’d like to
invest and back it, because they wanted to have
100 copies to give to schools in Africa to teach
them about international development,” Lily
says. “We were, like, ‘Wow, okay.’ So we had to
[go], obviously, full steam ahead.”