Tomasz Waldowski: Thank you for finding some time to answer a couple of my question. Do you remember when did you for the first time become interested in board games?
Tadeáš Spousta: Thank you! Sure thing! It was in high school 15 years ago when we were learning how to ski with the class. Almost every day we played some board games with classmates. I loved The Settlers of Catan at that time.
TW: When did you for the first time think about designing board games? How did you get such an idea?
TS: I was playing video games most of my high school and even after I started doing business, I was still playing long nights with friends. All that time I was wondering how could I create some game myself but that was always this problem with me not being a programmer or not having a few million euros. The idea started in 2014 when we played Terra Mystica and Mage Knight many times over. I got back to my dream about creating a game and I was telling myself that creating a board game could be possible even without a hundred thousand euros. When I see it now, I know I was wrong but at the beginning of the process, it was cheap. I started working on my first prototype in January 2015 and at the end of the year, I decided to give it a try, to make it a real thing.
TW: What do you want to achieve by designing a new game? What is your goal?
TS: It was a hobby from the start and in a few years, we decided to make a great game, with a fresh feel to it. Our goal is to make something that we all remember even after a few years.
TW: Where do you get inspiration for your games?
TS: Nearly all my inspiration is in video games I played in the past. Mostly Heroes of Might & Magic, Diablo, Baldur’s Gate, The Elder Scrolls series, Gothic and much more.
TW: In Euthia: Torment of Resurrection you are attepting to catch the spirit of cRPG games of the 1990s. It sounds like an enourmous challenge. How are you going to achieve this?
TS: I have to say, it is! Mostly because I have the exact image of how it should look, but when you put it into the board game, it just doesn’t work. There were more than two hundred iterations and changes to make this game work properly and as we are finalizing the Rulebook, some more changes have risen. The first thing we did was creating a modular tile-based map, this randomly generated map will make you feel like in video game because when you walk towards the unknown unrevealed map, it will reveal itself. Well, you have to do it, but it feels good. Another thing was the design of the player board, we made it like inventory in a video game, with your skills/spells, your equipment, and items. The main thing to do is a graphic design. We made it to be a little bit old-school.
TW: What is the story behind Euthia: Torment of Resurrection? Can you describe the universe which the game is set in?
TS: I’m not good at storytelling but I have some image of this world. Our team made more than 50 pages of background stories about the land of Euthia and its characters. Euthia is set in a fantasy world with all of those spells, magic, and creatures but it has the more real and raw feeling from it. The characters weren't born as heroes, they are trying to become them (with the help of players :)) In the background story you will find out how the dark magic called Faer devoured the land of Euthia, when and how the dragons appeared, who was Rasgaroth. Every character has their own story of where they are coming from, what formed them, etc.
TW: Is there something extraordinary in Euthia: Torment of Resurrection that you are especially proud of?
TS: Couple things, yes. The map, fast hero evolution and system of combat with monsters. When you start a fight, one of the other players takes control of the monster and with the help of some monster ability cards, they are trying to kill you. This system is unique and a pretty competitive one. It was very hard to make it work, but I think we made it! 😊
TW: I get the general 'feel' of the game. What about the mechanism? Is Euthia more like a euro-style game or an ameritrash, random, dice rolling game?
TS: Euthia is a mostly euro-style game with a smaller portion of randomness. For example, the combat system is based on dice rolling and playing abilities on both sides. But most of the bad luck can be influenced by various mechanics. Main game features are exploring the modular map, gathering resources from mining, elementals, and treasures, fighting monsters, completing quests, learning new abilities and shop and upgrade equipment.
TW: Do you think you can compare Euthia to any other board game? I assume you try to make it unique but from experience I know people like to compare things to another things.
TS: I hope it will not sound pretentious but our game is kind of unique from our point of view in Czechia. We did not register any other game of this kind. Boardgame fans often compare it with Mage Knight Board Game because of the hex map, but the gameplay is very much different.
TW: Can you share some artwork from the game and tell us if the final product is going to have miniatures?
TS: Yes, gladly! And now I can tell you for sure we will have two pledges. One with standees and another one with hero miniatures. Our game is not miniature based but a lot of fans made us no choice but to make them.
TW: Do you have other things planned for Kickstarter backers?
TS: Well the game itself is really big, the basic edition has about 6 kg and we are preparing it on the Tabletopia platform. So everybody will be able to try it before buying it. We will have a lot of video previews and gameplays. A lot of stretch goals will be there and the interesting thing is, we are not willing to just put something in there to make a stretch goal, but it should have some impact on the game itself.
TW: Do you have estimated release date?
TS: The game itself could be manufactured at the end of the year because most of the work on the game was already done. But with the actual situation with COVID-19 spreading all around the globe, we can’t be sure about exact delivery to our backers. I would love to deliver it before Christmas though. We will be adding information about it on our website, Facebook and, of course, on KS page.
TW: Who is testing your games?
TS: Friends, players in the whole Czechia 😊 and even some foreigners. We playtested it more than 1500 times. I’m a little bit tired of testing now because I was present in most of these testing sessions or played myself.
TW: And do you think the game rules are sufficiently polished right now? I am asking because I am a kind of player who likes to search for inconsistencies in rules. And quite often I manage to do that.
TS: Right now game rules are being polished with correction of our Rulebook and Appendix. We are working on the third version of the Rulebook at the moment. It’s a bit crazy job because the game itself is big and playing it is easy but to explain it in Rulebook, that’s the whole other thing! We are always happy when somebody finds our some error or overpowered equipment, skills or monsters. I have to say the Tabletopia will help us a lot with this because even now our testers are testing it on there and when we launch it for all our fans, the game will get even better.
TW: How long does it take you to transform the original idea for a game into a actual board game?
TS: Well, the first edition (released only in Czechia - Legendy země Euthie) took 2,5 years and the second edition Euthia: Torment of Resurrection took another 2, no 3 (sorry I got confused, we released an original edition in 2017) years to make it happen. The game itself is ready to be manufactured. And I have to say I’m working on it every single day.
TW: So making the game became your full time job? Or this is just your side project?
TS: That’s an interesting question. I’m doing business in finance since 2009 and when I manage to make it stable I found myself working on this board game. I still have to invest 25% time to manage my finance business but this Kickstarter is my double full-time job. You can imagine it like 1-2 days working in finance to earn money to invest them into working 5-6 days 12 – 16 hours a day. I’m leading the whole project, doing all financial decisions, marketing, and development of the game itself. But without my great girlfriend Markéta who is working with me full time on it, I could not make it happen. We have more than 5 other people employed full or halfway through.
TW: I assume you play other board games. Do you have a favorite title?
TS: Yes of course! My favorite board game of all time is Outlive. It is the most balanced game I ever played. It has a great feeling in the actions you take. And Wingspan is now the second. It is fast-paced and fun with beautiful illustrations and a lot of information about birds.
TW: I always like to ask in my interviews about the story behind the company's name. Why Diea Games?
TS: That’s a nice question. Not many people will know it but as I played video games a lot in my younger years, I created some nicknames for my characters and most of them were female. One of them is Diea and the other one is Euthia. 😊
TW: Where can we find news about your new games? Besides on my site of course 😊
TS: Everything can be found on our website https://euthia.com/ and our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/euthiaboardgame/. We will be creating our company website later after Kickstarter.
TW: I know that this game is not released yet, but do you have any ideas for games in the future?
TS: Well, it’s not something I think about, I don’t have anything now. I’m planning to add some cool things to Euthia in the future. When we shall succeed in this campaign, it makes sense to create more content for it. But it’s interesting, we met this remarkable person half a year ago who is working on his own game a few years now. We made an arrangement with him to help him finalize his game. I will not mention it for now, but it will be about exploring alien signal from space.
TW: Would you like to say something to our Polish readers? Is there going to be a Polish version of the game?
TS: We are excited about all of your feedback, so please feel free to write to us about your ideas and thoughts. For now, we are planning only the Czech and English versions of the game but I very much hope so, we can work something through with Polish publishers and make it happen! Thank you for the interview.
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