The Odyssey Begins!

Intro and Goals

Hey there and welcome to Board Game Odyssey! On this blog, I will be writing (hopefully) regular updates covering my attempts to bring my board game idea, Gardens of Alcinous, to life. I am a keen board game player, but have no idea what it takes to publish a game. What I do have is a concept, a will to bring it to life, and a talented wife who can 3D print my prototypes. My goals for the blog are threefold:

1. First, I want to share more information about Gardens of Alcinous and hopefully find other board game enthusiasts who, like me, are excited by the prospect of a PvP garden-themed Tetris game set in ancient Greece (I’m sure there are many people out there who fit this description…)

2. Second, I hope to build a community who can help me with difficult decisions along the way – even early in the process, I know how important feedback and peer expertise will be in getting this project to lift-off!

3. Third, I want to provide an honest, behind-the-curtain view of what it looks like to publish a board game. It is clearly a complex and exciting journey, and I want to provide a record of it for others who may be interested in following the same path and those who are merely curious.

Intro to Gardens of Alcinous

So, without further ado, let me give a short introduction to the game itself!

Gardens of Alcinous is inspired by a mythical garden that Odysseus visits in the Odyssey (Alcinous’ garden, surprise surprise). The garden was not only lush, full of flowers and fruits of all colors and varieties. It was also enchanted – enchanted to be in bloom forever, ‘each crop ripening before the old had dropped’. In Gardens of Alcinous, we imagine Odysseus has been returned to Ithaca but still dreams of Alcinous’s immortal garden. So much so, in fact, that he decides to summon the finest and most devout gardeners in all of Greece to toil each year until a garden is created of such splendour that it too receives the blessing of the gods to be in bloom forever. The players take on the role of these designers, each working to arrange the garden according to their own designs in order to win divine favor.

Tangibly, this results in a 1-4 player tile-placing strategy game. Each different type of flower and fruit in Odysseus’ garden is represented by a different tile shape (akin to Tetris tiles) and in each round the playing board transforms from a patch of dirt to a blossoming Eden. Points (*ahem* divine blessings) are won along the way for filling in all spaces in the garden and for completing godly quests, such as building temples and creating specific flower arrangements.

I will be publishing plenty of content with more detail on the gameplay, but hopefully that gives a flavor for now. The goal is to create a game that has simple core mechanics and a sub 1 hour play time, but still packs plenty of depth and pushes the player to work their spatial reasoning muscles. Think of it as the love child of the board game Azul and the arcade sensation Tetris :)