Quivit – Designer Diary
The Idea for Quivit! came to me in 2019 while I was taking a shower. Wanting to create a game for the longest time and while working on another game that had been causing me frustration, I thought to myself maybe I need to be more simplistic. It was at that moment this 4 color idea hit me and a flood of ideas came rushing to my brain. I jumped out of the shower and headed straight to Target for supplies. With supplies in hand, aka “Construction Paper and Tape”, I proceeded to cut out hundreds of colored squares, tape them together and arrange them into a grid and “PIVOT” (original title) FYI. After fusing with the size of the grid, I realized that this would work, so being a graphic designer I was not going to be happy with play testing with construction paper squares. I literally set up the whole game in Illustrator and had it printed to start play testing and tweaking. Shortly after playtesting I realized I had the design knowhow to graphically set up the game but lacked the written and mathematical knowledge to truly balance that game and knew I needed help and that when I asked my now partner in crime Jason.
-Andrew
As mentioned, I am an analytical guy, afterall I write commercial software for a living and went to school for Engineering. I have “built” D&D and Battletech campaigns since I was 13. I can see most things in my head, but it’s not until I write it on paper (sometimes literally) that I can start to see the imaginary lines connecting the thoughts in my head. Over the many years, I have perfected my ability to organize and “feel” the flow of my thoughts and put them into words.
Unfortunately for me, my brain is more mechanical than artistic. The wording of a game, layout and mechanics are not unlike writing technical design documents for software, but artistic I am not. Fortunately, Andrew and I talked and our partnership in games was the perfect setup. With Quivit! I did have to fight my nature to add rules and make it more mechanical, grin, but the simple nature of the game allows it to be highly approachable to everyone.
We definitely hope you like the game!
-Jason