It’s a badly-kept secret that some of my games are derived from others. None sprang completely new from my brow, like Athena. I’ve been playing board games since I was 8 years old, and of course that’s influenced what I create, in the same way that artists are influenced by seeing art, or actors are influenced by seeing films.  

The first board game I ever worked on that got published was the original Arkham Horror, back in 1987. Of course, Richard Launius was the designer, and deserves the lion’s share of the credit. but I did develop it to the point of publishing, thus I was the satellite to his planet, so to speak. 

The first tabletop strategy game I designed by myself was Cthulhu Wars. Of course I’d been spending the previous 23 years working on computer strategy games. 

Cthulhu Wars led to The Gods War fairly directly. I mean, Gods War wasn’t a clone by any means, but it is a pretty close descendant. Hyperspace is the latest game I’ve done in this phylum of games – i.e., it’s another asymmetrical multiplayer strategy game. But it is much less like Cthulhu Wars than was Gods War. When a naysayer tells me that Gods War is a reskin of Cthulhu Wars, I marshal my forces and make my defense. But when someone asks if Hyperspace is a reskin I just laugh, because it’s so dissimilar. 

I have another phylum of games, based upon the Orcs Must Die game (now sadly out of print). I eventually based some of the aspects of Planet Apocalypse on Orcs Must Die, but it is still pretty different, even in fundamentals. Recently I’ve designed a new game, titled Dinosaur 1944, and this too is in the Orcs Must Die “type” of games. 

I have three upcoming games which do not fall into either of these categories. These are Invasion of the Brood, a two-player war game; Star Captain, tactical space combat; and a new game which is co-operative, but emphatically not like Planet Apocalypse or its siblings at all.