Damien, are you a game designer originally?
Not at all, I repair machines for a pharmaceutical company. At the same time, I am passionate about plants, science fiction and board games. I wanted to bring together all these passions in a game, where the heroes are monstro-plants with very specific properties, which travel in space.
Your creation is called “Seeds of Evil”. How do you play it?
It is a board game focused on strategy. Each plant can fight on twenty separate planets. And to grow them, there are resources to use. The playability is very great, since one part is not the other. Each time, the creature changes or the planet changes. The player will have different life points and different resources. A game can last from 15 minutes to 1 hour. Everything is planned for a duel, but in reality there are no player limits. The minimum age requirement is 12 years old.
It’s a parallel world that you’ve been building since 2012, now…
Quite. I even created a story around the game. I plan to release a book to explain its universe to players.
What are your inspirations?
I’m quite a fan of card games like “Magic”, but I didn’t want my creation to look like that. The concept of growing monster plants and making them evolve is relatively original. It’s a very specific mechanic that’s unlike any other. Several experienced players told me they had never seen this.
How did you go about creating this game?
Several designers told me that I did everything backwards. The game had barely been created when I was already revealing it to large groups of players. Usually we just show the prototype to friends. But for twelve years, I have been giving presentations all over Belgium and France. This allows me to improve my game over time. It’s not always easy to hear criticism, but it allows me to evolve. In twelve years, “Seeds of Evil” has changed a lot. I almost gave up several times, but I persevered. I invented everything alone. I even created the illustrations myself, being a computer graphic designer by training.
Can we already get the game?
For now, I have a copy that is circulating in different gaming halls. A few days ago, I was at the “Japan Touch” festival in Lyon. I also take part in test evenings in specialized stores, notably in Gembloux. It is still very well received by fans of the genre. But it is not yet commercialized. I would like it to be next year. I saw several editors, but the project was already too advanced for them. The role of an editor is to take control of the game from the start. And I didn’t really want my initial ideas to be distorted. So I decided to self-publish it. Unfortunately, it is very expensive…
How much money do you need and how will you finance this project?
The price of a box in production is eleven euros, but I need 1000, at least. To this I must add several taxes. I arrive at around 13,000 euros budget. I launched a first crowdfunding (online participatory financing), between February and March, and I reached 4,500 euros. I would like to create a new one to, little by little, achieve my goal.
This content is not available in this configuration.
Find out here.
