by Frederic Moyersoen

I would like to share the design process of the gamebook Bite the Bullet: You are a legend, but first...

A Few Words about Myself

I'm Fréderic Moyersoen, and I love designing all kinds of games. More than 45 of my games have been published over the past twenty years, but Saboteur is by far my most successful game. This card game has sold more than five million copies around the world, including a special 20th anniversary edition in 2024.

However, for the past couple of years I've been looking for a whole new challenge. Normally, I design a game concept and start looking for a publisher, then after signing a license agreement, the publisher takes it over and my work is limited to checking the pre-production progress. This time it was completely different. I got out of my comfort zone and made a game from concept to finished product. Let me take you along on this special adventure.

The Start

The idea to make a gamebook came to me during the end of the Covid crisis. There was little opportunity to meet players at that time, and I had discovered a new type of game: solitary gamebooks. As a designer, I'm always wondering: "Is this something that I can make myself? Can I make something similar, but with my own unique approach?"

I took my time to find the right way for how to start designing a gamebook. My experience lies in a variety of game concepts, ranging from card to board games, but fitting anything in a book would be a challenge.

Nevertheless, I thought that printing on demand via the Amazon network would be possible. The management of orders, the printing process, and the delivery of the books is the part that I'm not the biggest fan of, and it sounded great that there is a worldwide service available. That said, marketing and promotion would be a real challenge, but my wife and three kids who supported the whole idea wanted to help me with their experience in social media. They convinced me to give it a try.

Searching for a Theme

As a big fan of Western movies, I've already designed several Western-themed games during my long design career. The first concept was called "Guns & Bullets", which was later adapted and published as Dynamit Joe from Tilsit Editions in France. This was my first game license.


Next, I designed "Dust, Sweat & Bullets", a card-driven combat game. I was rather proud of the concept but couldn't find a publisher for it.


A few years later, I made a pistol dueling game that I called "Bite the Bullet". The game worked well, but the gameplay was too fast and required some extra flavor.


The concept was limited to a duel between 2-4 characters in the middle of the street. I planned to evolve the concept, but corona halted the project, and it was soon gathering dust on my shelves.

However, the old "Bite the Bullet" concept appeared to be highly suitable as a theme for my first gamebook. I started to realize a makeover of the design, combining ideas of my previous concepts.

Design Choices

Finding inspiration involves not only searching for which concepts are working, but also figuring out what you don't want to include in your game. In my case, I didn't want to publish a roll-and-write book. There are already so many on the market, and it makes little sense to follow an existing trend. You must be ahead of it.

Instead, I wanted to create a complete game, like a boxed game, but in a book format. The idea of cut-and-play was born. In contrast to print-and-play, you don't need to print the materials on your home printer or run to a copy shop to print out each page. The book contains everything you need to play the game — but you must first cut out some components and glue them on cardboard. By limiting the number of components, this task remains easy and fun.


I had to skip the use of playing cards as this would require more preparation time, which might turn off potential customers since all cards would have to be cut out carefully, then sleeved to make them usable. The use of dice to add some randomness became an obvious choice.

Making a solitary playable game was a must, but I also wanted to make the design playable and enjoyable for more players. Most of the gamers that I know prefer to play with other people, so I wanted to find a concept that was at least playable with two players and if possible, with more.

My first focus was on developing a solitary version. The challenge is to design an interesting NPC (non-player character) opponent. Its actions must be easy to execute, unpredictable, adapted to the situation, and unique. I solved this challenge by adding an action table that is different for each NPC character. You roll a die and look at the corresponding action. So, easy and effective.

The design of the character sheet evolved a lot:






The same is true for the game maps. I decided to use my drawing skills to make original artwork. For many years, I took drawing, painting, and even sculpting courses, and this was the perfect project to illustrate maps in the way that I had always wanted to play them.

Below you can see some early sketches and a sample of a final map.





The basic game idea evolved in the following way: The enemies would start hidden. Therefore, concealed counters would contain decoys and real enemies. Players roll a die to know how many action points they get for the turn. There would be a list of possible actions.

Playtesting

The first playtests revealed the design to be interesting and exciting. The tactical dimension adds a lot to the game fun.

The next steps were to write a first draft for a rulebook, to develop a variety of scenarios, and to playtest them thoroughly. Playtesting is always a very important step in designing a game.


Playtesting the solo and co-op game mode was rather easy, and doing so allowed me to develop and fine-tune the game mechanisms before the real test: playing with other people.

Playtesters give a lot of feedback, even without speaking. By observing how they play, it's easy to find out how much they like or don't like your concept. Mostly, they quickly find out where the bugs in your concept are. When getting clear clues as to what is going wrong, you know where to make fixes. A simple "nice" or "I don't really like this" doesn't help you much. The most difficult part when listening to feedback is to actually listen. You should avoid defending yourself and starting a discussion. Let players speak and tell you what they like and don't like.

In the case of Bite the Bullet, the playtests with other players were highly instructive. I got a lot of suggestions to make improvements. The scenarios required intensive playtesting to check the game balance in different situations. This resulted in changes to the maps, to the set-up positions, to the victory conditions, and so on. Each change had to be playtested again.

The general impression of the players was rather enthusiastic, and this is always a good sign.

Cover Artwork

Creating attractive cover artwork took some time, but was necessary since a nice picture would trigger customers' interest in the gamebook. As my childhood dream was to become a cartoonist, it was a pleasure to indulge myself with Photoshop.

Below you can see the evolution from sketch to final picture:





Layout

During the writing of the gamebook, I realized that I had enough ideas for two books. It would have been possible to put everything in one big book, but I wanted to keep a competitive price that would be much cheaper than a boxed game. Therefore, I decided to split the book into two parts: volume 1 with the rules, all components, and eight scenarios, and volume 2 with seven extra scenarios, extra characters, and enlarged game maps.

The enlarged game maps are required to enjoy the game with more than two players and when playing with miniatures, which makes the game more attractive to play.

For the expansion, I drew a similar cover as for volume 1 depicting the same scene, but a few seconds later.


Conclusion

The whole process from first idea to published book took nine months, much more than expected. However, it was so satisfying to see the design growing and to keep control over the whole project. I could realize a complete finished product, including the final text, the final artwork, and the final lay-out. After the launch, the project still wasn't finished. The promotion and marketing had to be started from scratch. Such a thrilling experience!

After the initial launch, I planned to expand the game concept further, as I had enough ideas for it. So far this has resulted in volume 3: The Posse Campaign, which debuted in January 2025.

I had and am still having great support from my wife and kids, and their help was indescribable. The books are available on Amazon (here and here), as well as on Wargame Vault, with separate listings for the maps and counters in each book in case you want extras or don't wish to cut up the original book.

Thanks for reading this diary. I hope you have as much fun playing this game as I did when designing it. Looking forward to hearing your feedback.

Fréderic
All Alone Games