More Games Please brings you interviews with the best board game artists and designers. We find out more about their inspiration, the challenges they've faced and how they created the games we love.
All in Interview
[..] it was my first “big” board. There was some art already done and I had to respect the style by making mine very similar. When you don’t have a lot of experience, it’s a little bit scary because the board is the part where players are going to live their adventure..
This project should have been the best moment in my career. I was working with only friends (game designers and publishers) on a very fun and original game. Everything was supposed to be cool. Unfortunately, I’ve realised since then that it’s always when I think it will be cool and quick that it’s a painful and slow process..
Nature is a big source of inspiration for me; nothing is creepier than some of the things that already exist here on Earth. I’ve based monsters on parasites, diseases, carnivorous plants and deep sea creatures - I like that the Kingdom Death universe isn’t filled with the same old thing!
I used to go to second hand book stores and search for hours to find the beautiful maps in old travel guides. One map I found, from 1970, inspired me to make a personal map of Copenhagen. This actually started my freelance career, with many map-based freelance jobs coming in..
For me, the funnest part of these titles is when you get a piece to fit perfectly in a space and fulfil a plan you have been working towards. So when I started the design that became Bärenpark, I tried to make these moments happen often and be the real payoff for the players throughout the game..
I think I always wanted to be an illustrator, perhaps more specifically a comic artist - so I’ve been lucky. I was in hospital a lot as a child and my mum gave me comics to read and paper and pencils to draw with to keep me occupied - so perhaps my fate was sealed...
I had visited La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona when I was living over in France, and it was an amazing and beautiful structure! When the game was picked to me, I got really excited about the setting. I had also been playing around with stained glass as a graphical element in a couple of games before Sagrada...
I wanted the art to somehow convey a story, to have that Cold War vibe that the game needed. But also wanted to keep it light hearted. Once I had the first character created everything else flowed from it..
