SO, WHERE THE HECK DID THIS ECLECTIC THING COME FROM?
The game gestated from a desire to create another way for our families to come together during breaks in the every-day drama and bring out the general worst in us; yes we have strange families. The original inspiration came from an old Atari classic arcade game called Warlords, which was essentially head-to-head-to-head version of the classic Breakout.
Of course we quickly turned the four player version of this winner-take-all experience into a competitive drinking game, as you do. Now, how does this all evolve into a table-top, non-video experience? Well, a few burned up power PCBs and a strong belief in the paranormal, kinda influenced the product being now highlighted here.
The concepts of choosing who to attack or help, tearing down someone’s wall, inserting a bit of randomness, and encouraging endless social banter, have all been driving design goals that came from that original video arcade experience. Also, if you’re a regular Hold’em player, then you know that changing the probabilities through adequate table talk, is some of the best part of the experience; FRIGHT follows this model quite well.
Along with the seeds of inspiration, the game elements and rules had to go through many iterations or prototypes to get the feel right. The tombstones started out as simple Lego constructs, then moved to balsa carvings and then creatively evolved into our happy tombstone from there.
To get the feeling of the cards right, they also went through many iterations of both evolving the layout, design, rule text and developing FRIGHT’s own resident ghoul, “Alabaster,” who pops in to haunt just about every action.
Over Two Years of Playtesting!
Not only have we been playing this table-top experience with our families and friends, but have also been playtesting it solidly with groups of all ages for the past two years. With over 200+ hours of playtesting and growing every day, we feel the overall experience has now been honed pretty well. Although we believe there’s always ways for improvement, we’re in a good place now and ready to surface our fun creation to all the ghost-loving masses.
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