How Riot Games' board game Tellstones weaponizes memory
How Riot Games' board game Tellstones weaponizes memory
How Riot Games' board game Tellstones weaponizes memory
By Arda Ocal
September 16, 2020
Summary
No more than six minutes into the game we were accusing one another of blatant cheating and resorting to pot shots about memory loss.
As I paced back and forth in the bedroom, my pride wounded and my dear wife cackling triumphantly in the living room, I asked myself: how can one simple game like this provoke such a reaction? Sure, I don't like losing, and plenty of board games are rage-inducing, but this hit different.
"Play tests have backed this up - I think when I forgot my memory kind of growing up, it would usually happen in high stress scenarios like a test that I didn't want to forget and so I associate forgetting my memory and stuff like to something very frustrating. It feels very vulnerable. So when you lose at this game, it feels very personal in a way that, if I were to lose at tic tac toe, or Yahtzee or whatever, 'you out rolled me'. Alright, whatever. But if you beat me with a memory game, it feels like you're almost inside my head a bit."
"It was a group of us that had never really made a board game before anything like that, but we played tons and we knew what we liked and so we just tried to make a game that we'd be really proud to own. I don't think we were really expecting it to kind of take off or go anywhere."
Board games were always in the back of his mind.
If Mechs vs Minions is "a big, brawling, huge, silly cooperative" game according to Cantrell, Tellstones is the opposite in many ways: tiny, sleek, a competitive brain burner.
" It's such a silly problem as a game developer, but it is a very simple game and I think there are versions of this game that we could have named 'seven cards' and sell it for a dollar and it might feel overpriced.
One of the ways Cantrell decided to differentiate the game was quality - working with manufacturing partners to use top grade materials that are scratch resistant to create a tabletop game that not only lasts long, but also looks and feels good.
For fans of Riot Games lore, Cantrell says there are definitely more tabletop offerings on the horizon.
Reference
Ocal, A. (2020, September 16). How Riot Games' board game Tellstones weaponizes memory. Retrieved September 21, 2020, from https://www.espn.com/esports/story/_/id/29897910/how-riot-games-board-game-tellstones-weaponizes-memory