by Julian Tunni

Hello, Silence, My Old Friend
Case File: Cereal Killer

"It was a Tuesday. I'd been out of the design racket for years — too long. The ideas stopped coming, and the silence? It wasn't peaceful. It was the kind that hangs in the air like a loaded question.

"Then came a call from an old friend, Vecchione. Said he was running an online workshop for board game designers. I figured I'd sign up — see what the fellas were up to these days, maybe even find a reason to care again. Didn't expect much, but the moment that first class ended, something clicked.

"The assignment was simple: Write a hook for a game that uses a pair of compasses. Yeah, compasses. Real specific. I sat there in my office, lit only by the blinking neon of a dive bar across the alley, trying to make sense of it, but the silence had other plans. One hour in, and my mind had gone rogue — thinking about crime, movement in the shadows, secrets hiding in plain sight. Hidden movement. Like something or someone slipping through the cracks of the city.

"I'd never played one of those games before besides the static Battleship. Not my usual beat. So I went digging. Found a clip of Jamey Stegmaier talking about Scotland Yard. Said what made it tick was Mr. X always leaving a clue, a whisper in the fog. That was it. The first real clue in this whole mess. I scribbled it down: 'Always leave a trace.'"

Prototype First, Regret Later...

"A week later, I showed up to class with a confession and a stack of notes that broke all the rules. Said sorry, but in this line of work, you follow the game — not the instructions.

"I needed to see whether this thing had legs, so I did what I had to do. I built a prototype — slapped together what I had in mind with some mechanisms from an old case file, Lunes, my first published job, just to get something on the table."


"Called in Nani — my partner in crime and life — and Aibel, loyal associate from Super Noob Games. We tested it. No fancy set-up. Just tension, shadows, and the thrill of the chase.

"And damn if it didn't feel real. A cat and mouse game in which the mouse had a knife and the cats had no clue where it was hiding."


"The premise? A team of detectives, each with their own quirks and baggage, sweeping a grid for clues. Meanwhile, the killer stalked the map, always one step ahead, leaving traces only because they had to. Compulsion. A golden rule: take a life, leave a trail. Sounded familiar. I named it 'Serial'. Worked in Spanish and English. That kind of duality...well, that's just good business."

Constraints and a Tight Deadline: The Case Shrinks, But the Stakes Don't

"December 2022. Deadlines hung in the air like the last cigarette in the pack. That's when I stumbled on The Game Crafter's Single Card Challenge. Just one card. One shot. Like Russian roulette with cardstock bullets.

"I messed around at first — clumsy ideas, dead ends in alleys that led nowhere. But then the fog lifted. What if I could strip this whole hidden movement racket down to its bones? One killer. One detective. Two souls dancing in the dark. That's all I needed."


"The map? Used to be spread across four cards, each a window into a twisted city grid. I crunched it all into a single slab: a 4-by-5 grid, clean and cruel. On the left edge, seven days ticked down like doomsday. Marked turns 2, 4, and 7 with an X. Not kisses — kills. Victims, to be precise. The killer had to feed. Compulsion, again. Some ghosts just don't rest.

"The real puzzle wasn't in the streets — it was in the fine print: All the rules had to live on the back of the card. No rulebooks, no excuses. That constraint turned out to be one of the most valuable lessons — it forced me to focus on what really matters in a design, and taught me how to simplify without losing depth.

"Thankfully, I still had a trick up my sleeve: including household items was permitted. Dice. Chips. Buttons. Hell, even beans. Then it hit me like a punchline in a dark alley: cereal. Cereal Killer. The pun was cheap. The irony? Expensive."


"As usual, I worked on the graphics and followed suit — minimalist to the bone, matching with the new not-so-noir theme I had stumbled upon.

"Game ran 5 to 10 minutes. Tight and snappy like a pocketknife in a bar fight. Quick playtests meant rapid evolution. I tuned it, tweaked it, shaved off the fat."


"When I finally hit submit, I wasn't expecting applause. I was already happy I'd pulled it off.

"Out of 267 entries, Cereal Killer made the top 3. A tiny game about a compulsive murderer. So The Game Crafter printed two thousand copies of One Card Cereal Killer, giving them away as a promo item to their customers."


Adapt to Circumstances: Small Game, Big Moves

"Come 2023, me and the gang at Super Noob Games decided to give the killer a passport. We'd been dormant since 2020. Needed a clean start. Something lean. Cereal Killer fit the bill.

"Wallet games were the new craze in Argentina — fit in your pocket, punch like a heavyweight. Think about Día de Playa. Perfect for our growing but fragile industry. Big dreams, small budgets. That's the hustle in our land, but we always find a way to keep on track.

"While I fine-tuned the game, we assembled a playtest group with some of the best game designers from Buenos Aires. Met every Friday at Punto de Partida, a bar that smelled of coffee and cardboard. Playtests got brutal, precise. No fluff, no lies. Just designers tearing through mechanisms like a pack of hounds on a scent. One Card Cereal Killer left that room sharper, meaner, ready to walk the streets."



"We launched the game with a couple of creepy video ads, courtesy of my old partner in crime, filmmaker Nacho Sesma. The thing exploded. Went viral across Latin America like a bad rumor in a smoky room. We weren't ready for the attention — but then again, no one ever is."

Youtube Video
Youtube Video
A Furry Friend: Every Detective Needs a Dog

"A few months later, I was back in the lab with Aibel. We were chewing on an idea — adding a third player to the mix. Not just any player. A dog. Lola, the police mutt.

"It clicked instantly. A silent third partner. Loyal, instinctive, and with no ego to muck things up. Alpha player syndrome? Gone. This canine worked on scent and trust. Barks and bites. A nose for justice.

"Lola fit like a puzzle piece that had been missing since day one. We gave her a second card — an expansion of the killer's turf. Gotta give the wolf room to run, right? The detectives from the first draft made their comeback. The old gang, reborn. Stronger. Smarter. Doggier."


Extra! The Cereal Killer Thrills the Streets of Madrid!

"Then the phone rang. Primigenio — big dogs from Spain — wanted a license. Said they'd publish Cereal Killer across Spain and Latin America. I poured a drink. Took a long, silent sip. This thing was really happening.

"[user=Il Folletto]Francesco[/user] from M.O.B. Vanguard, our secret agent, helped dot the i's. Before long we were neck-deep in development with [user=Kawaisima]Nancy[/user] and [user=Ushikai]Sergio[/user], two sharp minds who didn't miss a beat. They wanted a bigger box, higher-end components. No more beans. No more buttons. This was the deluxe edition — same killer, new suit."


"Working with them was a dream. Clean, honest collaboration. No surprises. No blood in the water. Just mutual respect and a shared love for the dark, twisted thing we'd built.

"The new version? It's around the corner. And it's heading for SPIEL Essen 25, where the biggest names in the business gather to whisper about cardboard crimes."


"Meanwhile, I wait.
Back in the silence.
Back where it all started.
The killer's still out there.
And I've still got a compass on my desk.
Just in case I need to find my way again."

•••
He...Hello... One two... Julián speaking now.

Thank you, Detective, for your thoughtful words. Working with you has been a pleasure, like a coffee, hmm..., in the morning, uh... Okay, I'm not as good as you with analogies. I get it. English is not my first language anyways.

Thank you, too, reader! I didn't want to write a technical diary, yet I did still want to share some details on how the game was conceived. If you have any technical questions, just let me know and I'll be happy to answer in the comments.

Have fun!

Julián Tunni