Skybridge | Designer's Diary Part 1

Only two weeks left until you can finally try out Skybridge! We're taking advantage of this opportunity to look back at the long journey this game has taken. The writing team Franz Vohwinkel and Michael Rieneck take us on a journey through the development of Skybridge!

Francis:
“Illustrations for three 1000-piece puzzles for a new series of puzzles with fantasy motifs.” That was the commission that led to the creation of the Skybridge in the fall of 2010.
There were no other specifications from the publisher, so I had to come up with something – dragons. Sure, fantasy, there have to be dragons. But then? It had to be something different than the usual fantasy cliché with sword-wielding heroes and princesses to be rescued against a Neuschwanstein backdrop. Instead of developing three independent themes, I also wanted to come up with a short, small story that would connect the three puzzles.
So, what's cool? A hollow world. I've always found hollow worlds fascinating. What else? A mighty tower, like the Tower of Babel. Combined with dragons, that could be exciting. Why is the tower being built? Well, like with any large, monumental structure, to get closer to God. But that doesn't really fit with a hollow world, because in heaven, you only see the other side of the world. The sky above Thraen is finite. There was something missing that would make building such a tower worthwhile.

Then an idea came to me: Floating in the center of the hollow earth is a small planet, a moon! And what if the roles were reversed? If not the moon, but the hollow earth were a dry, barren world where humans constantly struggle to survive, while the world in the center were lush, green, and fertile? A visible, real paradise, right before the eyes of all humanity?
Wouldn't that be enough motivation to build a massive tower in the sky, forming a bridge between the worlds? A world bridge? A skybridge?
So I had found my little story for the puzzles: Part 1 – The construction of the bridge begins;
Part 2 – The bridge is half built, gravity is tipping; Part 3 – The bridge is finished, the people of both worlds meet.

The puzzles were produced and published, but as far as I know, they were not a great success: in any case, the puzzle series was not continued.
The Skybridge and its worlds would normally have been forgotten – if it weren't for these prints.
I had received prints of the puzzles from the publisher during production. Sturdy prints on really thick cardboard, poster-sized, not yet punched into individual puzzle pieces. I subsequently exhibited and sold these prints at conventions, tournaments, and gaming events. My little story about the Skybridge always piqued the visitors' curiosity.
“Where can I read something about it?” was a question I was often asked and which I always had to answer with “Sorry, I'm an artist, man. I can't write.”

Over time, though, it started to bother me. Was it true that I couldn't write? After all, I hadn't tried since high school. So, sometime in 2011, I tried writing an intro. I couldn't tell afterward whether the result was good or bad, but one thing had become clear to me: I really enjoy writing.

In the following years, the story and worlds of the Skybridge grew dramatically. It became clear that a short story wouldn't suffice to do justice to the complex interrelationships. The more I explored Thraen, the Eyestar, and the World Bridge, the more questions needed to be answered. A three-part structure again suggested itself: How does the bridge come to be built after no one had dared to do so for thousands of days? What happens during the construction of such a bridge when gravity constantly decreases and eventually tilts to the other side?
And what would happen when the World Bridge is completed and paradise suddenly becomes accessible to humanity?

I'd be a strange game illustrator if I hadn't also wondered along the way whether there wasn't a game lurking somewhere in the story. Unfortunately, there's a good reason why I became an illustrator: Mathematics and I have always been at odds with each other. But games need mathematics for their mechanics, just like players need the rules. It was clear to me that I was completely unsuited to developing a game.
But then, it must have been in 2013, at a party during the game in Essen, I met someone who could solve all the problems that a game brings with it to an existing story: Michael Rieneck.
I'd already designed games for him, but only knew him slightly personally. As we started talking, I gathered up the courage and finally told him about the Skybridge. Then I asked him if he could imagine designing a game based on an unpublished book...

michael:
…There are days you remember for years to come. And by that, I don't mean anything specific, like the weather or the date. I mean the feeling that day evoked in you. A kind of premonition that this day would change something. And that the experience would have a lasting impact. How long, I couldn't have imagined back in the fall of 2013…
Franz Vohwinkel just asked me if I could imagine developing a game based on a story that's been on his mind for a while and about which he intends to write a book. I need to sort this out for a moment and let it sink in. I've worked with book templates several times before, and I really appreciate it. For one thing, books usually provide great stories and eliminate the need to find a – usually artificial – theme for the game. They also provide me with a common thread for the game's development right from the start of the project.
But a book that doesn't even exist yet? That seems a bit bizarre to me. Still, I have no doubts. When an experienced game illustrator like Franz Vohwinkel comes up with a story, it's surely something very imaginative, which should provide enough starting points for a game idea. I don't even know what the book will be about yet, but I already know my answer: "Sure, I can imagine that."
And so begins a very long journey into a strange, epic world, which since that day has taken on ever more concrete forms before my mind's eye and continues to captivate me.
I can't remember exactly when, over the years, Franz told me which detail of the story. But since I couldn't look it up, I repeatedly asked him countless questions about it during our work together, and he patiently gave me just as many answers. A process that continues to this day. Indeed, there's still much for me to discover in Thraen. At first, it was the major themes we discussed that would play a role in the game: The Hollow World, the Star of the Eye, the inhabitants of Thraen, the cruel queen, the Drakhen, and the deities. And most importantly, the quest to build a skybridge. "Great," I thought, now I have the game's goal and was immediately reminded of the cathedral building in "The Pillars of the Earth." So, the thematic framework was established pretty quickly. And one thing was clear to me from the start: Franz definitely wants to illustrate his story with opulent images. Large playing cards are undoubtedly the best medium for expressing one's artistic potential. And of course a big game plan.
When you take on such a large "commission," you want certainty quickly. Can I even think of anything suitable? Will I really be able to develop a good skybridge game that will convince the players, and especially Franz? The project has entered my mind, and it will stay there until you either succeed or ultimately fail. Very soon after our conversation, I got to work and created a card-based board game in which a bridge between worlds is built. At that point, I only knew a few of the main characters in the story. Franz had already told me about some of the cities and landscapes of Thraen. I still remember how strange many of the names seemed to me back then. Today, they are long familiar to me, and it seems as if I've known them forever. But I wanted to put all that aside for now and first develop a good game mechanic that fits the theme and could then be brought to life later. The first prototype was actually finished before Christmas. And it failed miserably. For my test players and myself. The decisions to be made were boring, and the atmosphere of an epic story didn't even come close to being conveyed at the gaming table. Franz never even saw this prototype, nor the second one, which was also a disaster.
So the beginning was a complete failure.

So, the beginning was already a complete failure. Furthermore, I had gained an insight during the first two attempts, which initially frustrated me, but later turned out to be a stroke of luck. I had originally let the players create their own rather extensive card layouts, which they were to lay out successively on their side of the game board. The space required for this extended far beyond the normal dimensions of a conventional gaming table. It quickly became obvious: A maximum of one row of cards could be laid out on each side of the game board, nothing more, was the sober conclusion. Unless we resorted to very small cards. That didn't seem to be a real option for this project, which was also supposed to thrive on its impressive illustrations. Then I came up with the idea of ​​​​limiting the card layout to a row of
6 cards so that they would fit comfortably on the side of a large game board. Whoever played a 7th card would then have to cover one that was already in play. This would then be unusable for the player from then on. In terms of space, this worked perfectly. From this moment on, each player would have 6 card slots at their side, which they had to fill tactically cleverly. We had already assigned a color to each ethnic group. It consisted of 18 cards, which were laid out in separate piles on the game board. At the start of their turn, they could take a face-up card and receive a bonus appropriate to their respective ethnic group. This has not changed to this day. Even back then, the top cards of the piles were only revealed at the beginning of the new round. This meant that the current starting player always had the largest selection of cards in the current round.
The cards were intended to control the actions required for the game: acquiring technical knowledge and raw materials for the construction of the World Bridge, supplying the population with food, expanding military power, intrigue, oracles, paying homage to the gods, benefiting the Drakhen, etc. There were a whole range of different actions on the cards. Many came and went or changed.
So the space problem was solved, but the game still didn't work. Unfortunately, the decisions were still pretty trivial. It was far too easy to construct a well-functioning layout. So I wanted to limit the freedom in forming the card layout. This was the "birth" of the runes. With their help, I wanted to "bind" the individual cards to specific card slots. Whoever wanted to play a specific card had to place it in a specific card slot, covering any card already displayed there. This quickly proved to be a step in the right direction, and I asked Franz to design six runes for me that could be displayed on the cards and the slots. At first, there were actually six runes, but as it turned out, the freedom was still too great.

Only after we limited the slots—and thus the runes—to five did "slot management"—as I called it—become challenging enough to serve as a core game mechanic. (The sixth rune from back then is still around, by the way—seen on a belt belonging to Raphis, the rebel leader, and as a tattoo on Hamises's neck.)
Francis:
In the meantime, Michael and I had started working on the game, and the first elements we needed were, of course, the symbols for the actions, layouts for the game cards, and a game board.
Michael needed more and more information about Thraen for his work on the game. My focus during this time was therefore primarily on Thraen's further development. Although much of this was already documented, Thraen's geography needed to be visualized. I needed maps to understand the connections between the regions and their peoples.
The game board and the placeholders for the game cards then developed from these maps.

michael:
By now, I was certain I'd found the core mechanics of the game and set about distributing the cards and their functions evenly across the five runes. I was in close contact with Franz about what thematic content was allowed to be included in each deck of faction cards. "Metal and Drakhen are only available among the Utreng, salt only in the Free Cities" was an example of information he gave me. It's easy to imagine that thematic accuracy and gameplay necessity don't always go hand in hand. And so, we made a few compromises, but by then, I'd long since been gripped by my own "Skybridge fever" and no longer wanted things in the game to be completely different from the fictional Thraen world. It was a challenging puzzle that we had to solve together, but we managed to distribute the actions coherently and meaningfully across the now over 100 faction cards.
Meanwhile, Franz had crafted a breathtaking three-dimensional world bridge, which sat enthroned on our game board. It looked incredibly stunning, and I can still see the image clearly in my mind. By then, I no longer had any doubts that we would find a publisher for Skybridge. But that was a painful mistake. Countless days, weeks, months, and even years of work had gone into the project. Not only in developing the game idea, but also in designing the prototype, which, thanks to Franz, turned out to be completely different from the ones I usually create. And had it all been for nothing? For a short time, we even toyed with the idea of ​​launching a Kickstarter campaign. But in the end, the project seemed too big for us – without any experience in this field. As difficult as it was for us, we had to admit that we probably wouldn't be able to depict the story of the Skybridge in a board game and convince other decision-makers of our support. At this point, the "Skybridge Game" chapter would probably have ended. Then, at the beginning of 2020, the Vohwinkels decided to move from Seattle to Eckernförde – just a 15-minute drive from my home.

We continue on Monday with part 2!